


We Were Bound To Get Together

by myrmidryad



Series: Ordinal [1]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Buffy the Vampire Slayer References, Canon Disabled Character, Communication, Developing Relationship, Everyone Has Issues, F/M, Friendship/Love, Happy Ending, M/M, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Relationship Negotiation, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:55:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21852556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrmidryad/pseuds/myrmidryad
Summary: The slow development of Maria and Michael learning how they fit together as a couple, Maria and Alex figuring out how to be friends again, and the three of them trying something new together.
Relationships: Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: Ordinal [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1593349
Comments: 37
Kudos: 116





	We Were Bound To Get Together

**Author's Note:**

> Turning up to the Nebulous Well-Adjusted Future Weekend of Possibilities AKA the RNM Fluffathon three days late with poly fic? That's just the way I roll, apparently.
> 
> This is _basically_ post-S1 canon compliant except for the tiny change of Noah never telling Isobel about keeping Rosa's body in his pod. So that cave is undiscovered and Max is alive but everything else is pretty much the same.
> 
> Title from [Shut Up And Dance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgUIlh2h7CQ) by Walk The Moon, because this woman IS their destiny! In this context, anyway.

Maria could handle the alien shit. She could handle the government conspiracy shit. She could handle the very hurtful fact that her best friends had both been keeping her in the dark about it all. She could even handle Max’s healing powers being able to fix Michael’s hand but doing nothing for her mom’s scrambled brain, though that part was probably the worst and most painful.

She could not handle the fact that Michael Guerin was a huge pleaser in bed. It was driving her kind of wild, actually. The power was going to her head. She found herself thinking about him at work, in the shower, in bed before she fell asleep (if he wasn’t there for any of those). She’d literally never been with anyone so fantastically giving, and not even in the way that sounded. 

Michael hid nothing. If he knew how hot it was, he didn’t say. He was loud and unashamed and didn’t hold back the way most men did unless they were drunk, high, or _very_ into whatever was happening (in Maria’s experience, anyway). 

Thinking about the way his eyes fell shut, the way his mouth hung open, the glazed-over look he got on his face, it got Maria going like nothing else. The way he put his hands where she put them and used them how she told him, it got to her. The way he buried his face in her neck and inhaled like she was the greatest thing he’d ever smelled, the way he groaned her name, the way he fucked up into her when she rode him and didn’t stop, even when she knew it had to be exhausting. It was all incredible.

So the sex was mind blowing. Some of the other stuff, she was still figuring out. She knew Michael hadn’t had an easy life, and she’d never seen him with anyone, woman or man, longer than a night. He’d pick the same woman up multiple times, if she was amenable, but he’d never been in a relationship.

That became very clear, over the first few weeks of them being together. Settling into something a little like a routine, where she figured out how to fit Michael into her life. There was a reason her dating life had been pretty quiet over the years – she was a busy woman. She ran the Pony on her own, and she’d been taking care of her mom full-time on top of that for years too. Her life was work, sleep, repeat. But she was falling for Michael, so she figured out where to fit him in.

At work, sometimes. He’d come in, he’d nurse a drink, they’d talk in her free moments. If the Pony was closed, he’d help out. She’d told him he didn’t have to, but he insisted. He wanted to spend the time with her, and he liked fixing things.

At home, more and more now. She’d gone over his trailer a couple times, but her house had the bigger bed, and it had a couch too. Michael had needed to be eased into that. The first time she’d flopped onto the couch and manhandled him next to her until she was wrapped around him like a snake and put the TV on so they could start watching Buffy (which he’d only watched the occasional episode of, and agreed easily enough to a marathon), he’d been stiff and uncertain.

“Relax,” she advised, amused. “You’re about to witness a pop culture behemoth.”

“Okay,” he agreed, a tiny crease between his brows like he didn’t quite understand the concept of binging TV. He had relaxed, slowly, over the course of the first episode, and then more as they watched the second and third.

It was a puzzle piece.

He obviously had no idea what to do in the mornings. Maria guessed he was used to either being kicked out or getting a head start before his partner for the night woke up, but the first time she made breakfast for them both he offered to eat her out, and looked almost worried when she told him they didn’t have time.

“It’s breakfast, Guerin,” she said, pushing a plate of pancakes closer to him. “You don’t owe me for it.”

Another puzzle piece.

He watched her while she did her hair and makeup, curious, like he’d never seen anyone do it before. Which, well, it was very possible he’d never seen a black woman taking care of her hair before. Letting a guy see her night time routine was definitely a second or third date level intimacy, but Michael had already seen her at possibly her messiest morning-after – she’d never had sex outdoors that didn’t involve a car, and remembering how unkempt she’d looked after that first Texas hookup still embarrassed her.

But he watched, head cocked on one side while she wrapped her hair, or put it up in pincurls or rollers, and he was careful not to touch the wrap once it was up in case he loosened it by accident, and he said the way it showed off her neck was sexy. He loved her neck, and she loved the way he dipped his head to kiss it, his curls soft against her cheek, his lips hot on her skin.

Michael was an oddity in a lot of ways, and sometimes the way he watched her made her feel like she was the alien out of the two of them. He showed her his powers, wary and uncertain, and when she touched the nail polish bottle he’d floated and declared his ability incredibly cool, he laughed in what sounded like pure relief.

Another piece.

He was occupied a lot of the time with Isobel, still messed up and hurting from her husband’s betrayal. Maria didn’t plan on ever telling her that she’d seen Noah with other women at Ranchero Night. She didn’t need Isobel as her enemy. Michael was occupied with Max as well, and Maria could tell when they’d been together because Michael would either come to her snapping with tightly-leashed anger, or bewildered and affectionate, seeking comfort.

He liked to be held, and he wasn’t shy about it. Maria loved him for that more than anyone else she’d ever been with. He wouldn’t ask for it though, and it had taken him a while to figure out that she would happily hold him the whole night, as long as it was comfortable. 

Michael didn’t always seem to know what he wanted. “Whatever you want,” was his standard response if asked, which had been sweet at first, but was just frustrating a few weeks in.

“I’ve, uh.” Michael swallowed after she asked him next time, shirtless on her bed where she’d pushed him. “Um.”

“No requests?” she smirked, climbing into his lap and getting a hand in his hair, pulling slightly the way she’d learned he liked.

“I like making you feel good,” he breathed.

“How about if I wanna make _you_ feel good?” she countered.

“You do,” he said, eyes gold and glazing over the longer she held him in place.

“Give me something to work with here, babe.” She leaned down to kiss him, loving the heavy weight of his arms around her waist, hot up her back. “I don’t like to guess,” she murmured against his lips. “I’m not a mind-reader. You get to want things too, y’know.”

He swallowed. “Um.”

“Yeah?” she encouraged.

“I…don’t know?”

That just screamed puzzle piece. “Okay.” She gave him a thoughtful look and kissed the corner of his eye. “Think about it then. And right now…I wanna blow you, and I want you to direct it.”

“Direct it?”

“Like I do when you go down on me.” Men needed directing when they did that, in her experience. Some needed more direction than others, but until they’d done it for her at least a dozen times they couldn’t be relied on to go it solo. And that was fine, she was picky about the way she liked to be eaten out, and it was a surprisingly good test of how decent a guy was in general. Being a good listener meant listening to more than Maria’s complaints about customers.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” She kissed him, filthy sweet until he was grinding up against her, and drew back quick to leave him gasping. She grinned and slid backwards, easing herself down onto the floor between his legs.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “Okay.”

The guy was not a natural at the whole direction thing, but Maria could see the potential. She’d sucked him off twice before and he’d made the most beautiful sounds but barely touched her, and she hoped to encourage a little more of the touching side of things. Once he got her confirmation that it was okay to touch her hair as long as he didn’t mess it up or pull, he did that. She moaned whenever he got bolder, and that helped. 

“My.” He sounded so choked, like it was an effort just trying to speak. “Oh Christ. You could. _Mmmm._ Your nails?”

She smiled as much as she could with her mouth full and scratched her nails lightly down his thighs. He moaned, and breathed a “Yeah,” when she did it again, harder. 

It was a slow process, but she didn’t mind it. She liked him. She was beginning to love him, and really talk to him. More than complaints about customers, more than local gossip. It was a little scary, how easy he was to talk to, so much easier than she’d ever expected. She was used to putting on a smile and pretending things were fine, but she felt the need to pretend less and less as time went on.

Michael was a good listener. He didn’t offer advice or opinions unless she asked for them, he didn’t patronise her, he didn’t tell her how she should be feeling. He listened and held her and agreed when she told him the way things were for her. It was a balm on a piece of herself she had barely realised was hurting, she’d buried it so deep.

He talked to her too, muttering about Isobel and how hard things were with her and Max, how they’d changed so much since Liz had come back to town and found out what they were. If Maria mentioned places she’d thought of travelling to when she was a kid, he told her about plotting courses into space. He took her to see his bunker, the console he’d built, the pieces still missing. Shy, wary, he showed her what he’d been doing all those years, between jobs and between fights at the bar. He told her how he wanted to build a way back to the home he’d never seen, but hoped someone would come to find them first.

He told her how unhuman he felt, always, and she saw how it unwound something in him to be able to call her human, to be able to differentiate between himself and the species he looked so much like. She told him how she’d always felt different, one of the only black faces in a town made of shades of white and paler browns. They compared experiences, the way he blended in on the surface but was so obviously different in secret, the way she stood out in a crowd and sometimes wished she could blend in a bit easier.

He learned the songs she sang as she puttered around her house and the Pony, and learned to hum and sing along. He never told her to stop, and never complained that she sang the same songs over and over. He left a toothbrush in her bathroom. He got her to give herself a night off one Friday night and drove her down to Carlsbad so they could go dancing.

She loved him. She was _in_ love with him. Michael fucking Guerin, nothing but a nuisance for years, who’d have thought? Michael Guerin, barfly and cowboy, all swagger and smirk, more than happy to go to his knees for her, more than happy to pin her down, to cuddle on her couch, to laugh himself stupid at the voices she put on when she thought no one could hear her.

Learning to be a boyfriend, for her. She figured it out about three months in, feeling like an idiot as the puzzle pieces finally slotted together. And typically, it was Alex that made her realise it.

Alex was the one thing they hadn’t talked about. He wasn’t avoiding them, but he didn’t seek them out. He came to the Pony, usually with Kyle or Liz. He drank her beer, made small talk, and if Michael came in he’d slip away. But she heard from Michael that he was fine around him in any other context, though that context was usually Project Shepherd related.

There was a story there Michael hadn’t told her, and she wasn’t pushing for it. He’d talk when he was ready, and she’d made it clear that she would listen when that time came, if it did. 

Maria wondered often whether Alex knew the story, and how much about Michael Alex knew that she didn’t. She wanted to ask, but she was a little afraid of the answer.

She watched Alex out of the corner of her eye when she was working. She watched him hold himself with a sharper edge, watched him stand up and give Emmett Murphey a cold smile when he called him a fag, watched him invite Emmett outside, and heard from Liz afterwards that Alex had taken the guy down in two hits, slamming his head into the side of the building so hard and so quick that Emmett’s nose had broken in three places and he’d cracked his cheekbone too.

She watched him with the military men she served, the way he relaxed around a select few. She watched him talk too seriously with Kyle, and loosen up around Liz. She watched and concealed her jealousy when he came in with Isobel, not knowing what the hell she was even jealous of.

And she felt him watching her right back. As wary as Michael, as fake as Isobel. He was polite, and she hated it. He was considerate and careful and he was giving her and Michael space, and she missed him so fiercely it ached. He hadn’t been like Liz when he left, vanishing off the face of the earth. He’d visited, and written, and called. They’d kept up with each other – she knew about his deployments, he knew about her boyfriends.

She had whole conversations with him in her head, things she’d tell him about Michael, advice she’d ask for, giggly confessions, shy admissions, all of it. He’d been her best friend, and now he was an acquaintance. 

Watching him and catching him watching her, she finally realised that she’d been measuring herself against him in secret, and winning, at least in her estimation. Alex had surely visited Michael while he’d been on leave. They’d been each other’s first loves, she was sure of that. They’d gotten back together, however briefly, when Alex had moved back to Roswell permanently. But they’d never been boyfriends. Michael had never been anyone’s boyfriend.

The first time she watched him do the dishes and put everything away in its correct place, she sat up on the counter and pulled him in with a leg hooked round his waist and kissed him until they were both laughing. The first time she let him put her hair in rollers, he did it perfectly, having watched her do it for weeks at that point, and he looked so happy to be allowed that she hugged him for a full minute. The first time he shoved _her_ onto the couch to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, thoughtlessly bossy, her delight had made him blush.

Michael had never been anyone’s boyfriend. He’d never done the domestic stuff before. Whatever he and Alex had been, however much it had meant to both of them, they’d never been together like that. Michael hadn’t watched Alex’s night time routine enough times to do part of it for him. He didn’t know how Alex organised his kitchen. He’d never binged a TV show with him.

Maria steeled herself three months into dating Michael and stood herself right in front of Alex the next time he came in. “Heard Lyndsey and Jenny got into another fight last week,” was his opening, a now standard offering of small talk bullshit. “They break anything new?”

“I’m having a movie night,” she told him, and didn’t miss the way he went still for just a second, thrown off script. “You know Michael’s never seen Star Wars?”

Alex blinked rapidly and sat back, mask sliding back into place like she’d never dislodged it. “What, any of them?”

“He’s seen a bit of Empire Strikes Back, he remembers the big robots in the snow.”

“The.” Alex’s expression got a bit pained. “The AT-ATs.”

Maria grinned, and Alex narrowed his eyes, realising he’d been caught. “Nerd.”

“Shut up. When’re you doing this?”

“When are you free?” 

Alex narrowed his eyes another fraction, caught again. She knew damn well that if she’d named a date, he would have claimed to be busy. “I’m kinda busy, Maria.”

“Well I don’t want to watch Star Wars without the guy who can correct me on my robot names.”

“They’re not robots.”

She smirked. “Point proven, thank you. When’re you free?”

“Who else is coming?”

“Whoever else is free the night you pick.”

“Why am I picking the night?”

“Because you’re the one with the busiest schedule, and I wanted to get you nailed down first. You’re priority one.”

“Isn’t that Michael?”

“Michael will make himself free whenever I ask as long as Max or Isobel don’t have an emergency.” He would have done the same for Alex, she wanted to tell him, suddenly regretting her flippant tone at the flash of pain in Alex’s eyes. “We could have a different movie night first if you want,” she offered. “You, me, and Liz. I feel like I barely see you two together.”

Alex hesitated. “Miss Congeniality?”

“Bring It On?” Maria countered.

“10 Things I Hate About You?” Alex smiled. 10 Things had been Liz’s favourite, and Maria grinned too.

“Let’s just make it a marathon. All the old classics, all the popcorn we can eat. Are you allowed to wear nail polish?”

Alex looked down at his hands. “No.”

“Never mind.” She made sure to sound light. “You’re still on popcorn duty. When’re you free?”

Alex finally dug out his phone and they settled on that Thursday. When she told Michael he couldn’t come over that night, and why, he looked torn between amusement, hope, and worry. “Relax, cowboy.” She went up on her toes to kiss his forehead, something she’d figured out he went soft for. “It’ll be fine.”

And it was. It was fragile, at first, but as the beer and popcorn flowed it got easier. And after four movies, with Liz snoring quietly on the couch, Maria made Alex come with her as she wrapped her hair clumsily so they could keep talking, and then gestured pointedly to the bed when he hesitated at the door.

“We used to all the time, don’t be a baby,” she yawned.

“I’m not.” Alex sat on the bed though, hands cupped around his right knee. “I had two legs last time though.”

“So?” She was already in her pyjamas, and she flopped down behind him and curled up so she could see his face. “You think I’ll be grossed out or something?”

“Maybe.”

“Lemme see, I wanna see. If you’re okay with that,” she thought to add. “Shit. Am I too drunk? I wanna have serious conversations with you.”

“Me too,” Alex sighed. He fell backwards and they both burst into giggles when his head fell onto her ankles. “Shit, why are you so bony?”

“I thought it was my curves you didn’t like?” she grinned, and giggled as he started singing, soft and sweet.

“I’ve got the gift of one-liners, and she’s got the curse of curves…”

“Worst song ever.” She nudged his head with her bare foot. “Shut up, God.” Her curves, that’s how Alex had falteringly tried to explain it to her, back when they were fifteen and figuring themselves out. They’d tried kissing, just to see what it felt like, and Alex had muttered that it wasn’t _her_ , he just didn’t like girls that way. Their voices, their bodies, any of it. And Maria had rolled her eyes and said she _knew_ , he’d told her that before, but they might as well practice kissing with each other so they could get objective feedback.

They’d been inseparable. Her, Liz, Alex, and Rosa. She’d been inseparable from all of them on different levels, but then Rosa had died and Liz had left and it had just been her and Alex. Her and Alex, grieving together in the too-brief weeks that summer before he had to leave too. 

“Did I ruin everything?” she asked suddenly. “I miss you so much. I didn’t know you guys had so much history, or any real history.”

Alex sighed, right from the bottom of his lungs. “I don’t know,” he said finally, voice low. “I hate you sometimes, but you didn’t _make_ him choose you. And I didn’t tell you about him, and I fucked things up with him…so badly. But I hate you for picking him over me too.”

“I love him,” she whispered. 

“I thought you loved me too.”

“I do.”

“But you picked him.” Alex turned his head to look at her, eyes bleary from drinking. “If I were Liz, and Michael was Max, would you still have picked him?”

Maria had to close her eyes and frown, trying to figure out the logistics through the haze of beer. “Wait, who’s who in this scenario?”

“If you’d fallen for Max,” Alex said patiently. “Knowing how Liz felt about him, would you still have picked him over her?”

Maria thought about it, slowly. “If Max came to me,” she said at last, “and if he cared about me, and he…if he took care of me, and told me he wanted to be with me, and said that what he had with Liz was over and it had been over for a long time, and then he told me a bunch of really important secrets Liz and everyone else had been hiding from me? Yeah. I might’ve picked him.”

“Out of spite?”

She made a disgruntled sound and sat up, looking down at Alex. “Because I’m a selfish bitch. Happy?”

Alex looked up at her, expression blank, and then closed his eyes. His breathing was a little uneven, and Maria waited, sure he was about to say something. “I miss you too,” Alex whispered. “I miss him. I fucked it up. I fuck everything up.”

“At least you didn’t actively choose hos over bros. I’m winning worst best friend points in spades over here.”

“You kind of are.” He sighed. “I can’t sit up.”

“I’ll undress you,” she decided. 

“You need to take my leg off first.”

“Okay.” She slid gracelessly onto the floor and shuffled until she was sitting cross-legged in front of Alex’s spread legs. She pushed up the leg of his jeans, frowning in concentration. “Is there like, a button or something?”

“Latches, on the sides.”

“Got ‘em.”

“Does he love you?” 

“He says he does.” Maria eased the prosthesis off as gently as she could. “Hey, this is lighter than I thought it’d be!”

“They’re expensive for a reason. Take the stump socks off first, then the liner. You need to…kind of pull it inside out? It’ll be gross and sweaty.”

“That’s cool, I can wash it out or whatever.”

“Is he happy?” Alex asked quietly, and Maria swallowed the very real threat of tears.

“I think so.”

“Good. He deserves that.”

“With you on that.” The liner was silicon and just as disgusting as Alex had said it would be. Some sweat actually dribbled out of it and onto her rug, and Maria made a face. “Can’t believe the shit he’s been through.”

“He’s amazing,” Alex agreed sadly. “Never told him that. I’m such an idiot.”

“You’re so drunk.” Maria pushed herself up onto her knees and reached forward to undo Alex’s fly. “Hold onto your underwear if you don’t want me to pull that off too.”

Alex reached down obediently to hold onto the waistband of his boxer briefs. “I miss you all the time.”

Maria leaned her forehead on his knee for a second, inexplicably winded. “Did I ruin it forever?” she asked, choking up a little. 

“I don’t know.” Alex lifted up his hips, and Maria gave herself a kick and started tugging his jeans down. “Maybe. Did you even think of me at all?”

“Yeah, of course I did.” She kissed the skin of his right knee as she pulled his jeans down past it, then kissed the other because she wanted her affection to be symmetrical. “First thing I said to Michael was that we should talk, but then I noticed his hand and all the alien stuff came out.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Alex sighed again. “It’s a trip, right?”

“And then some. I still can’t believe how chill Liz is about the whole thing.” Maria peeled the normal sock off Alex’s left foot and patted his thigh. “Shirt?”

“Yeah. I brought…something. Another t-shirt.”

“In your bag?”

“Mm.”

“Too far away,” she groaned. “Borrow one of mine.”

“S’long as it’s one Michael’s never worn.”

“Nooooooo problem.” She staggered to her feet and went over to her chest of drawers. Huge men’s shirts were the comfiest sleepwear she’d ever found, and she had plenty that were just hers. “Ah. You’ll have to sit up.”

Alex groaned and held up a hand. Maria grinned and went over to help haul him upright, grabbing the hem of his shirt as soon as it was free and dragging it forward off his body. “Arms up, babe.”

“Urgh.” Alex obeyed though, and let her slide her biggest t-shirt onto him. It was a dress on her, and it was baggy on Alex. “Huh.” He blinked down at himself. “It’s soft.”

“Duh, you think I sleep in rough shirts?” Maria held out her hand again. “C’mon, up a second. Oh hey – you wanna brush your teeth?”

“Yeah.” Alex sounded very aggrieved by it. “Only got one fuckin’ leg though. And no crutches.”

“Lean on me, I can take it.”

“If you fall over, we’re both going down,” Alex warned, but he allowed her to pull him onto his foot and slide an arm around him, holding onto him as tight as she could and standing with her feet planted to take his weight.

“It’s like five hops to my bathroom, we can do it.”

“I’m too drunk,” Alex muttered. “This is a stupid idea.”

“I’m the queen of those, remember? C’mon. One, two, three, _hop._ ”

They hop-shuffled into her tiny ensuite and Maria stayed tucked against his side as Alex brushed his teeth with one of the spare toothbrushes she kept under her sink. 

“It’s weird,” she decided, looking down at Alex’s stump. “But it’s not gross. And I think it’s only weird because I mostly remember you with two. I have to keep reminding myself these days.”

“Good.” Alex’s eyes were closed, a little bit of toothpaste dribbling slowly out of the corner of his mouth. “’Ass ‘ee idea.”

“Yeah, you’d never know to look at you.” Maria hoped that wasn’t insensitive to say, but it made the non-dribbly corner of Alex’s mouth twitch up in something close to a smile.

“’Anks.”

Maria leaned her head into Alex’s shoulder and sighed. “You think we’ll ever be back to normal? Like, best friends again?”

Alex hummed in a sad sort of way and leaned down over the sink to spit and rinse his mouth out. He kept his head down for a long time, sucking down huge gulps of water from the faucet, and swayed a little when he straightened up. Maria steadied him and watched their faces in the mirror, so similar and so different to when they’d been kids.

“Remember the time we all got wasted on top of the Crashdown?” she said. “And Liz threw up and you kept coughing every time you tried to smoke with Rosa?”

Alex smiled, eyes closing again. “Yeah.”

“You think we’ll ever be able to go back to that?”

“No.” Alex leaned his head on top of hers, leaning on her so heavily she had to adjust her feet to make sure she could hold him up. “Rosa’s dead and Liz is armoured up and we all know about aliens. And you’re…we’re both selfish. And I’m a killer.”

Maria forgot that sometimes, the way she forgot about his prosthetic leg. It seemed so strange to her that Alex had been one of those men she and her mom had watched on TV, bulky and armed under a faraway sun, murderers in a faraway land. She’d never understood why he’d enlisted.

“Think we can ever get better then?” she asked quietly. “I want to. I miss you. I don’t want to have fucked this up forever but if I have…I get it. I’d hate me too.”

“I wish I hated you more.” Alex sighed and shifted his weight. “C’mon, I need to be horizontal.”

They hop-shuffled back to the bed, and Alex collapsed onto the covers with a grunt. “Why don’t you hate me more?” Maria asked cautiously, pulling the covers back and getting in, and kicking Alex gently until he rolled under them as well. 

“I can’t resist Michael for shit,” Alex mumbled, halfway to sleep already. “Can’t expect otherwise from you. Don’t worry, I still hate you kind of a lot. I love him more though. And you. It’s…confusing. Is it confusing for you?”

“Not confusing.” Maria hit the lights and rolled over to face Alex in the dark, curling up on her side. “I’m good at not thinking about sad stuff. So if I don’t think about it, everything’s good. Michael’s…”

“Yeah,” Alex agreed very quietly.

“But then I think about you. And I feel like such a bitch.”

“You kind of are.”

“Yeah.” Maria pressed her forehead to Alex’s shoulder. “It’s my fault.”

“I dunno if it is though. That’s why confusing.” Alex sighed. “Way too drunk for this.”

“Would you even talk about it sober though?”

“No way.”

Maria snorted, her own eyes falling closed as lethargy caught up with her. “Can’t believe you’ve got the balls to call Liz armoured up.”

“Mm?”

“The fuck’re you, Alex? You’re all armour these days.” She butted his shoulder with her head. “Since you enlisted.”

“Since Michael,” Alex murmured. “And his hand.”

“Huh?” she frowned. “His hand?”

“He told you, you know. His hand. My dad. The shed.” Alex sighed. “Too drunk. Night, M’ria.”

“Night, Alex.”

In the morning they were all hungover, and they didn’t talk about anything important. But Maria remembered what Alex had said, and she watched him, and watched him watching her. She didn’t often open up her senses intentionally, and she had a policy of not doing it around her friends, because of privacy and respect reasons. But alcohol and tiredness were two of the things that lowered her guards, and she found herself picking up on Alex’s self-directed disdain and his wariness of her.

She felt better after a shower, more put-together and in control. She and Alex hugged each other goodbye with no incident, but she couldn’t forget what he’d said.

“So I don’t usually ask you things,” she told Michael when she saw him next, the next night. Closing was at one in the morning on Fridays and Saturdays, and it was part of her new routine – hers and Michael’s routine – for him to come to the bar late, alone or with Liz or other company, and stay after closing. And she’d learned by now that if he didn’t help her clear up, he’d think she was pissed at him, so she put him to work wiping tables and clearing chairs while she and Damian or Luce did their closing jobs.

It had taken a while for her bartenders to warm to the idea of her dating Michael, since what they’d seen of him was the asshole who came in, racked up a tab, got drunk, and got into fights. But they’d mostly accepted by now that he’d turned over a new leaf.

“Ask away.” Michael smirked at her, suggestive as sin, and she snorted and swatted him with her bar rag.

“Keep it in your pants, cowboy. Not asking you _for_ things, asking you questions.”

Michael frowned a little. “Okay. Like what?”

“Beep beep,” Luce sang, coming by with the broom, and Michael backed up and let her sweep where he’d been standing. Maria jerked her chin, Michael nodded, and he went to help Damian with the chairs. They’d finish what she’d started later, they’d agreed silently. And ooh, Maria loved that they were now at the point where they understood each other without needing to speak. She was always good at it, generally speaking, but it was wonderful when people caught up to her.

Maria drove them back to hers, and Michael draped his arm along the back of the bench, healed left hand cupped around her shoulder. “So,” he said, low and quiet. “Askin’ me things.”

“Yeah.” 

“What d’you wanna ask?”

“Well, everything, I’m a curious cat.” She shot him a quick smile, and slid an inch closer to him along the bench. He was so warm all the time, and he held her close exactly the way she wanted him to. “But I know…what’s the nicest way to put this? You have a ton of issues.”

Michael snorted. “Don’t sugar-coat it DeLuca.”

“Would you want me to?”

“Nah.” He turned his face into her hair and kissed it. “You wouldn’t be you otherwise.”

“Good answer.” She smiled when he laughed. “So would you mind me asking you stuff?”

“Like, about my ‘issues’?” He made quotes with his free hand.

“Yeah. You don’t have to answer.”

“But I can if I want.”

“Obviously. That’s how questions work, y’know.”

“Shut up.” He kissed her head again, and she grinned. “You wanna ask now? Go for it.”

“Okay.” She bit her lip, hesitating. “Your hand.”

Michael inhaled slowly. “You wanna know who broke it.”

Maria turned her head towards him as much as she could without taking her eyes off the road. “I was gonna ask how it happened, but yeah. And also, what the hell?” The shed, she remembered Alex saying. Michael’s hand. Alex’s dad.

She wished she could even be shocked. All she was was heartbroken.

“It’s kinda complicated,” Michael said, mumbling behind her thoughts. “Involves Alex.”

“His dad did it.”

Michael flinched back from her, almost drawing away completely. “Who told you?”

“No one.” She glanced at him, neither of them smiling now. “I just realised.”

“Your…” He wiggled his fingers. “Thing?”

Her lips twitched and she lifted a hand off the steering wheel to wiggle her fingers back. “My thing, yeah.” It tickled her no end that Michael was a literal alien from outer space, but he had problems accepting the fact that she had psychic abilities. “And I just put together something Alex said at our movie night.”

Michael did pull away then, so wary that she could practically feel his hackles going up. “What’d he say?”

“He was drunk,” she warned. “He wasn’t telling me anything. We were talking before bed, and I think…I think I said something about how he’d changed when he’d enlisted? Like, not after he left and actually started the training, I mean when he actually made the decision to do it. And he said it wasn’t the enlisting that changed him, it was…” 

“Me.”

“Your hand and his dad. And a shed?”

“Fuck.” Michael rubbed both hands down his face. “Okay, uh. I can’t talk about it.”

“Alright,” Maria said. She’d only half been expecting him to say otherwise, and she wasn’t disappointed. Just sad for him. “Seriously,” she added, because a quick sideways glance at Michael gave her a good look at his miserable expression. “Michael, you’re allowed to not tell me shit. I don’t tell you everything, it’s okay.”

He frowned though, sliding further away. “You don’t tell me stuff?”

“Yeah?” She raised an eyebrow and gave him a sideways look. “If I wanna bitch about some creep staring down my shirt while I’m pouring his drink, I’m not gonna do it to you, no offence. Same if I wanna talk about crystals or my latest tarot reading or, like, I don’t know, girly stuff.”

“You can talk to me about girly stuff,” Michael huffed.

“Yeah, like you can talk to me about alien stuff, or guy stuff, or science stuff.” Maria turned onto her street. “But there’ll be parts of all of that I won’t get, and that’s not a _bad_ thing. It’s not a crime for you to go to your siblings about alien stuff and, I don’t know, Max I guess about guy stuff, and Liz about science stuff. I’m not your one stop shop for everything in your life.”

In her peripheral vision, Maria saw Michael relax. She’d told him that before; he’d understood it then, and he understood it now. He was smart like that. “Right.”

“Right,” she echoed. She pulled into her drive, parked, and leaned over to pull him into a kiss he practically melted into. “I’ve got you,” she murmured against his lips. “Okay? And you’ve got me.”

“I’ve got you,” he repeated, and pressed his forehead to hers. “Yeah. Freaked out for a second there.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it.” She kissed his cheek and slid away to get out of the truck. He followed, coming round to hug her from behind as she unlocked her door, kissing her neck and laughing when it made her giggle. “Come on, cowboy.” Fridays and Saturdays she was usually too tired for anything but bed, but Michael’s hands on her waist were doing it for her. 

“Hmm?” He followed her in, and she heard the deadbolt slide home though neither of them had touched it. Stuff like that had freaked her out at first, but she was used to it now. She kinda liked it, how easy it was for Michael to take care of her, how he clearly liked to do it and didn’t expect her to praise him for it.

She spun in his arms and kissed him properly, but he didn’t kiss back the way he usually did when they were leading up to sex. He was slower, more hesitant, and Maria slowed down to match him and eventually pulled back to look at him, arms over his shoulders, one hand in his hair. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” He was frowning though, those two little creases between his eyebrows etched in deep. He looked at her carefully, and seemed to recalibrate. “Yeah,” he said again, and leaned down to kiss her.

She kept it short though, and pulled back again. “Not in the mood?” she asked.

“No,” he said, too quick, and she narrowed her eyes up at him.

“I don’t mind if you aren’t.”

“I’m not,” he protested. “I’m fine.”

She wasn’t buying it, and now she was thinking about it, it made sense he wouldn’t necessarily be up for sex just after talking, even slightly, about Alex and the history they shared. “Hey.” She nudged their noses together. “Can I try reading you?”

“I thought you’d already read my cards.”

“I did. You know what I mean.”

“You wanna read my palm?”

“I don’t need a palm to read someone.” She tilted her head. “I can keep it under control, don’t worry.”

His lips twitched into a smile. “I’m not worried about your psychic powers, DeLuca.” 

She snorted and kissed him softly. “Dick. I just asked since it can bypass the whole words thing. I used to practice with Alex and Liz when we were kids.”

Michael leaned back against the wall, thumb sliding under her shirt to stroke warm against the skin of her waist. “Could we…is it weird if I ask if we can try an experiment?”

“It’s not weird. I know you love to experiment.” Her smirk made him laugh, and their next kiss was even softer. “Bed?” she murmured a minute later. Another thing she loved about Michael – he was perfectly happy to make out as long as she liked without pushing her into any ‘next stage’. Making out could just be making out, it didn’t necessarily have to be foreplay.

“You still wanna…?”

Maria pulled his head down to kiss the line of his eyebrow. “Do you?”

“You know I’m always up for it.”

“No one’s _always_ up for it.” She laughed and kissed his other eyebrow. “Bullshit are you up for it after six drinks, and you’re not up for it after you fight with Max, and you’re _definitely_ not up for it after –”

“Alright, shut up.” He kissed along her jawline, biting gently. “I could be though, if you want.”

Jesus Christ. “You remember those times I say no?” She leaned back and gave him a wry look, trying to keep the humour up and the hesitations at bay. “It’s okay for you to say no too. It’s almost three in the morning, Guerin, I’m not expecting you to be a hound dog at all hours of the day and night, on demand like some sort of stud horse.”

It worked – he laughed, and Maria laughed with him. “Really loving those animal metaphors tonight, huh?” he grinned.

“You bet. So – bed?”

“Yeah.” He pressed his forehead to hers for a second, then wrapped her up in a tight hug. “I’m pretty beat.”

She squeezed him hard, his stubble prickling against her face, and stroked a gentle hand down the back of his neck. She’d never been with a guy who’d struggled with the concept of _no_ for himself. For other people, sure. But never for himself. It was an odd thing to wrap her head around.

She’d obviously hit on something though. Michael was a touchy guy at the best of times, but he was all over her as she got ready for bed, and as soon as they got in he practically welded himself against her, his chest to her back, body curled around hers as close as he could get. She took his hand, the left, and kissed his knuckles. “Sure you’re okay?”

“Mmhm.” He lifted his head to rub his nose against the side of her neck and kiss her behind the ear, a spot he knew she loved. “I’m great.”

“You are,” she agreed, and snuggled back into him. “Night, babe. I love you.”

He hummed, a soft, happy sound. “Love you too.”

Fuck, she really did love him.

She’d intended for the next movie night to be the time to test-drive being in the same room as Michael and Alex without one of them driving the other way, but typically that idea was crashed when Michael came to the Pony on one of what Maria had started to think of as Alex’s nights. 

Michael was a weekend kinda guy. He worked harder Monday through Thursday at the junkyard, and tended to hang out with Liz and his siblings more then too. The bar closed at eleven on those days, and if he was coming over he would meet her at her place (which he now had a key for, not that he needed one, but they both agreed that it was the symbolism of the thing that mattered) after she closed up. And whether they’d worked it out formally or not (which she doubted), he and Alex had so far never showed up to the Pony on the same night.

Till now. 

Michael had that stubborn set to his mouth and those creases between his eyebrows and he sat himself down in the chair next to Alex at the bar and caught Luce’s eye. Maria saw her lift a bottle, saw Michael nod, and saw him turn to Alex with every bone in his body visibly braced for a fight.

She couldn’t hear them over the background noise and the music, but she kept a tense eye on them until she could sidle along to the other side of the bar to check up on them.

“– isn’t fragile,” Alex said, ever-expressive eyebrows telling a very unimpressed tale. “She’s not fine, but she’s making things as good as she can right now.”

“I know how strong she is,” Michael said, voice tight. “You don’t need to tell me. I just want to know if she’s okay.”

“She’s not.” Alex shrugged and took a drink from his own bottle. “Did you expect her to be?” Michael caught sight of her then, and his expression must have given her away, because Alex turned around to see her too. “Hey.”

“Hey.” She smiled, not even trying to hide her nerves. “You okay? Want another?”

“I’m good. I need to drive later.” He shifted in his chair, and Maria realised that he didn’t like not being able to see her and Michael at the same time. She moved past him, ostensibly to get a scoop of ice, and saw him relax in the mirror behind the bar. “Busy tonight?”

“Busier than expected.” She turned and passed the glass of ice to Luce, who’d just started in her direction for ice of her own. Luce snorted and took it, and went back to serving. Maria turned and made sure she was exactly between Alex and Michael when she looked at Michael and smiled. She hadn’t exactly meant to, but it was reflexive by now. “You’re not usually a Wednesday guy.”

“Finished early.” He glanced at Alex. “Figured I might find Alex here.”

“Well don’t let me keep you. Oh, actually.” She leaned forward, hands on the bar. “You were just talking about Isobel, right?”

Alex’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah?”

“Do either of you know how she feels about Star Wars?”

Michael laughed and looked at Alex, who raised his eyebrows. “You want Isobel to come to your next movie night? I thought you hated her.”

“I hated who I thought she was when she was apparently being possessed,” Maria said, shrugging. “I can give second chances. Anyway, I’m busy, so quick – Star Wars, yes or no?”

“She’s watched the new ones, but not the old ones,” Michael supplied, grinning. “Maybe one of the prequels, I’m not sure.”

“None of the originals?”

“Not that I know of.”

“You think she’d like them?” Maria asked.

Michael, incredibly, looked to Alex, who shrugged. Michael gave Maria a ‘who knows’ sort of look. “I would’ve said no before, but she’s been trying a lot of new stuff lately, so she might.”

Maria smiled. “Good. All I ask is that she try them. I need to go.” There was a person waiting behind the man Luce was currently serving. “But when I get back, can you guys give me a date that you think would work for everyone?”

Alex was the one who nodded, his smile only a little fake. “Sure.”

“Thanks.” She darted out a hand and touched his, the sort of casual touch she’d always given him before she’d started going out with Michael and possibly ruined everything, and Alex went still but didn’t react otherwise.

There wasn’t time to overthink it. There were drinks to serve, beers to pour, the rare cocktail to make. Ice to restock, cash to count out, a smile for every customer.

Alex left before she managed to get back over to his and Michael’s end of the bar, but he’d stayed for a good twenty minutes, and Michael greeted her by leaning forward over the bar and kissing her cheek. “Next Thursday,” he said, quiet into her ear, and she rewarded him with a huge smile.

“Yeah?”

He fell back into his chair with a bump and nodded. “We checked. Kyle’s the only one who might not be able to make it.”

“Well there are seven of us,” Maria allowed. “Tricky to find a perfect date without synchronising calendars or something. Hey.” She leaned forward and smirked. “You and Alex were in the same place as me and none of us burst into flames.”

Michael snorted and ducked his head, turned away, rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re getting…we’re not so bad these days, I think.”

Maria nodded. “That’s good. Right?”

“Yeah.” Michael sighed, still not looking at her. “He said a while ago how we were never really friends. I’ve never been his friend.”

It was sad, but she guessed it made sense. “How’s it going?”

“I don’t know.” He waved a hand. “Confusing. I don’t know _how_ to be his friend. I’ve been asking Liz for tips.”

Not Maria. Which made sense, but still stung a little. “She tell you he has a huge sweet tooth?”

Michael finally smiled. “Yeah.”

“And he’s a huge Panic! At The Disco fan?”

The smile widened. “I already knew that.”

“Good start.” She couldn’t help smiling back. Michael’s smile was infectious when it was genuine. “She tell you he likes those little oranges you can split into segments?”

“No?” Michael’s eyebrow rose, but he was still smiling.

“He likes to share them,” Maria told him. “And he prefers Star Wars over Star Trek, but because he has a thing for Han Solo, not for any good reason.”

Michael laughed, then bit his lip, smile fading. “Would he be okay with you telling me stuff like that?”

“I’m not spilling his deepest secrets here, babe.” But Maria wasn’t sure now, and she had to stop anyway – Janey Tillbury was coming over, and she always wanted a palm reading with her beer. “You taking me home?”

“I’ll take you wherever you like,” he smirked, slipping into flirting easy as breathing, and Maria wanted to take him out back and get him to lift her up on the counter and make her moan.

“Promises, promises,” she purred, and grinned at the heat in his eyes as she slid away to deal with Janey.

That first brief collision of the three of them eased the way into more though. Even before the now arranged movie night, she and Michael were having breakfast at the Crashdown when Alex came in for a coffee and Michael waved him over without seeming to think about it, though the reality of what he’d just done seemed to hit him as soon as Alex headed in their direction.

Alex sat on Maria’s side of the booth, and Michael explained that they were trying to figure out a way to prove the validity of her psychic abilities, and did Alex have any ideas? 

He did, as a matter of fact, and offered several anecdotes of times he’d seen Maria’s powers – or Mimi’s – in action. Michael was still sceptical though, and Maria sat back and drank her milkshake as the two of them argued back and forth over the best way to work it out. It maybe should have been weirder, but she’d had plenty of experience with Rosa when they were kids trying to test whether they were telepathic, and she would rather drink scalding coffee than get in the way of Michael and Alex working together on something.

Especially something involving her, in her presence.

Her heart was filling up just sitting there with them, and she couldn’t resist butting in after she’d finished her drink, and they ended up ordering another plate of waffles. A glance between her and Michael, and they agreed on Michael asking for extra whipped cream and another plate to make sure Alex ate some too.

It was easier at the movie night too. She sat between Liz and Alex on the couch, Isobel sat in the armchair close to Alex, and Max and Michael sprawled on the floor. Maria had never really seen the familial likeness between them before, but then she’d never been looking for it. They bickered like every pair of brothers she’d ever known though, and switched from irritation to laughter as fast as children. 

Isobel was tense when they snapped at each other, and Maria saw them glance at her a lot to check whether they were going too far. Michael had told her he and Max were working on being nicer to each other for Isobel’s sake, but it was sort of cute to see it in action. She knew they all treated Max like the oldest, but that night she saw Isobel and couldn’t help thinking of her as their big sister.

It was sweet.

And Alex was his typical nerdy self. Closer to Isobel than Maria had known, though everyone else seemed to have been aware. He answered any questions she had, and got grumpy when Liz hissed at him to be quiet during a tense scene. He gave Maria pained looks when she asked innocent questions he _knew_ she already knew the answers to, and he and Michael both had to be told to shut up when they went off on a tangent about the mechanics of space travel. He mouthed along to the dialogue in a few places, smiling like he couldn’t help himself.

It was _fun_.

Michael clearly caught her relief, and after everyone else had gone he took her to bed and they had the best giggly sex she’d possibly ever had. It kept getting better, that was the best thing. The better they got to know each other, the more comfortable Michael became, the more Maria relaxed.

To the point that a few days later he came to hers after she’d gotten home from the Pony and called her name as he opened the door, and she felt a wave of pain from his direction as strong as an aura. “Michael?” she called back, alarmed. She’d been moisturising, was still just in a towel with her hair tied back. 

She stepped out of her bathroom and watched through her open bedroom door as he came down the hall. He didn’t look hurt, nothing seemed visibly wrong until he came into the light and she saw the expressions flickering across his face. She wiped her hands on her own arms and crossed the distance in two steps, reaching up to cradle his face. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Michael stared at her like the words didn’t compute and just shook his head after a second, pulling away and swallowing. “Sorry,” he muttered after a moment. “Shouldn’t’ve…I’m bad company right now, I shouldn’t’ve come.”

“Hey.” She grabbed his arm and tugged him over to the bed. “Come here, cowboy. Take those boots off.”

“I mean it,” Michael warned her miserably. “I should go.”

“You’re here now, and I don’t want you to go. Actually, hey – do you wanna shower?”

“Saying I smell bad, DeLuca?” he tried for a smirk, and she rolled her eyes and yanked him a step closer so she could press her face into his neck and inhale. He went still, then curved into her, hands floating hesitantly at her hips like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to touch. Which was ridiculous, so Maria wrapped her arms around him and kissed his jaw.

“You smell like you always do,” she huffed. “I like how you smell. But you like my shower, and I got this new conditioner I think you’d like.”

Michael’s hands settled on her, over the towel. “I shouldn’t.”

“Why?” She leaned back, hands linked at the small of his back, and tilted her head as she looked up at him. “Think you’ll scare me off, Guerin?”

He swallowed, and Maria raised her eyebrows, startled to think that she might have hit on something there. “I don’t.” He stopped and sighed, a pained frown etching the lines on his forehead in deep. “There’s a lotta stuff I haven’t told you.”

“I haven’t given you my life story either,” she pointed out. “We’ve been dating for three and a half months, babe. I know there’s stuff you haven’t told me.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Remember when I asked about your hand?” She bumped their foreheads together gently. “You don’t have to tell me everything. And, y’know, call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s completely insane for you to be used to keeping things close to your chest, what with having secrets like yours.”

Michael closed his eyes, and she felt him steeling himself for something. She felt very underdressed all of a sudden, standing against him wearing nothing but a towel. “Alex,” Michael started, sounding like he was dragging the word out. Maria made a quiet noise to indicate she was listening and stayed where she was, holding him close. “He’s been…you know he’s been telling me about the stuff he’s finding about Project Shepherd.”

“Yeah,” she said softly.

“The night Noah died, that day, I went with him and Kyle to a place called Caulfield.” Michael was speaking faster, eyes still closed. “A prison for aliens, survivors of our crash. My mom was there.”

Maria tightened her grip instinctively, horror washing through her. Michael didn’t have to say that something had gone terribly wrong. She knew he would never have left his fellow aliens locked up otherwise.

“Alex found her file today.” Michael’s voice cracked, and he ducked his head against her shoulder and Maria pulled him in, squeezing him tightly. “I didn’t…she died, and I never even got to hear her voice, I don’t know anything about her other than that she loved me. I thought her file would give me something useful, but…I don’t even know her name, I don’t know, I never…”

Maria was crying too, her empathy overwhelmed by the sheer crushing weight of grief rolling off Michael in waves. She thought of her own mom, confused and stuck in Sunset Mesa, locked up for her own good. She imagined never knowing her mother, of only meeting her through the bars of a cell, of losing her before even having the chance to know her name.

“My fault,” Michael mumbled into her shoulder. “It was my fault, I killed her.”

Maria squeezed him harder and forced her tears down harshly. “Michael, I know pretty much zero about this situation and I can still tell you with a hundred percent certainty that you didn’t kill your mom.”

The story came out over the next half hour, and afterwards Maria wrapped her hair in a plastic bag and got back into the shower with Michael, who was wrung out and exhausted and still radiating hurt. She washed his hair and his body and kissed him every time he muttered an apology or something about how he should get going. She dried him off and scrunched her new conditioner into his curls and wrapped his head in the t-shirt she kept especially for her leave-in conditioners.

And then she took him to bed, because one of the things she’d learned about Michael over the weeks they’d been dating was how much he needed physical contact, even if he didn’t seem to realise it all the time. She leaned back against her headboard and held him tightly until he started to drift off. And then she shifted him onto his side of the bed and turned out the light, tugging the t-shirt off his head and deciding not to wrap her own hair. It would survive a night, and Michael was turning to hold onto her already, and she didn’t want to leave him for a second.

“You’ve seen me cry like eight times about my mom,” she told him in the morning when he started making awkward attempts at apologising again. “You’re allowed to cry on me about yours. And like, about anything, I won’t judge. Just wait till we get to the end of season five of Buffy, I’ll be crying all over you.”

Michael looked appropriately alarmed at that. “What happens at the end of season five?”

“Ah ah ah, no spoilers.” 

“I could just look them up online,” he grumbled, and she just kissed him, because he’d been saying that since they started and hadn’t so far. 

She’d tried telling Liz about how a big portion of her joy in this rewatch was coming from watching Michael’s reactions, because he’d managed by some miracle to stay almost completely unspoiled. He’d started out trying to be cool, but he’d given up on that by now and he was fully engaged. But Liz had only ever watched episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer here and there. She’d never loved it the way Maria and Rosa had, and Alex later. 

Maria and Rosa had shared the VHS boxsets, taking turns buying them depending on who had money at the time, and Alex had watched them then. He was the one who would really get a kick out of Michael’s love for Oz and Drusilla, and he was the one who would be able to join in with Maria when she teased Michael for disliking Angel so much.

It struck Maria then how much fun it would have been to do a rewatch with Alex as well, and that thought hurt so much that she buried it immediately.

It popped up more and more though, over the next few weeks. They did more things in groups, and Maria kept watching Alex, who kept watching her right back. She didn’t miss the way he and Michael looked at each other too, though it had a definite friendly edge now. However they were spending their time when they saw each other without her, it was working. 

Michael had asked her once, early on, whether it would bother her that he and Alex had to see each other occasionally. For alien and Project Shepherd-related things, obviously, nothing personal. And she’d recalled very suddenly how touchy Rick, her boyfriend before Chad, had been about her working in a bar full of men. And she’d told Michael that as long as he didn’t cheat on her, he could do whatever he liked with whoever he liked.

She still had fears about Michael coming to her with dreadful guilt and telling her he and Alex had…who knew, kissed or slept together or crossed a line in some way. But so far that hadn’t happened, and Maria was keeping her inner eye directed firmly away. She’d learned her lesson multiple boyfriends ago that trying to learn people like that wasn’t welcome or the best way to keep them.

One night at the Pony, Alex drank with the obvious intention to get drunk, which she knew he only did if he had plans to stay with Kyle or one of his Air Force friends. He stayed till the end of the night, which was unusual, and he gave her a serious look when she told him gently that she was closing in five minutes.

“I’ll get out of your hair,” he said, in that quiet, careful way drunk people had. “I’m good at that.”

“You staying at Kyle’s tonight?” she asked, rather than delve into that minefield.

“Got an open invitation and a key. He’s on a night shift.”

“You can stay at mine if you want,” she offered, and the look he gave her was far too piercing for someone who’d had as much to drink as he had.

“Guilty, Maria?”

“Yes.” She owed it to him to be honest. “And I miss you, and I care about you.”

He snorted and looked down at the bar, then snorted again and held out his right hand. “Read my palm. I’ll pay. What’s your going rate?”

“Fifteen dollars. Wait.” She frowned. “I don’t want to read your palm.”

“Thought we were gonna experiment?” he said snidely. “Or was that just you and Michael?”

“We haven’t yet.” She took his hand, but curled his fingers over so his palm was covered. Her hands cupped his, smaller and darker, her long nails and silver rings contrasting against his undecorated skin. “I thought we were doing it together.”

His smirk was cruel. “Need me to guide you through it?” 

She tapped her fingertips against the heel of his palm and took a deep breath before saying, “We shouldn’t talk about this unless we’re both drunk or both sober.”

“Rational Maria.” He pulled his hand out of hers, his spite a quiet, leashed thing. He’d learned that, over the years. He’d been much quicker to anger when they were kids, but now he kept his feelings so fiercely guarded.

“You want me to call you a cab?” she asked, instead of engaging. She knew this game, though she hated playing it with Alex.

“Don’t bother.” He stood up, careful and sure on both legs. “See you around.”

He came to her two nights later with a blank expression and an apology in the air around him. It was only six, too early for any sort of crowd, so she came right over as soon as he sat at the bar. “The usual?”

He nodded, and clenched his jaw. She popped a bottle open and put it on the bar in front of him, and shifted her weight from one leg to the other when he pressed his fingertips to the cold glass and looked at her through his lashes.

“I was a dick the other night.”

“A little,” she agreed. “But it’s not like you don’t have your reasons.”

“Michael’s his own person,” he said, and Maria could recognise a rehearsed line when she heard it. “I shouldn’t be getting mad at you for a choice he made.”

“We don’t choose who we fall for.” Maria looked over at the booth she’d sat in when Liz had told her that. “I’m the one who –”

“And I’m the one who jerked him around for ten years,” Alex interrupted, looking down at his beer. “And he’s the one who only ever spoke to me in metaphors and dramatic declarations. We’re all dicks. It’s fine. I’m working on being his friend, and we’re…it’s getting better.” He swallowed and lifted his gaze to hers again. “He made his choice, I’m not gonna hate him for it, and I’m not gonna hate you for it either.” 

“I’d understand if you did. I don’t know if I’d forgive me.” She sighed. “I don’t know if I can even forgive myself.”

Alex shrugged. “That part’s your business. If it helps, I don’t think I’ve forgiven myself for anything in my whole life.”

Maria raised her eyebrows. “Well that’s just not healthy.”

“Who am I if I’m not a being fuelled purely by spite and guilt?” Alex asked dryly, and Maria narrowed her eyes at him.

“Were you being fuelled by spite and guilt when you were with Michael?”

“I was never _with_ Michael.” Alex looked almost taken aback by the snap in his own voice, and looked quickly down at his beer again. “That was kind of the problem.”

What she wouldn’t give for an annotated timeline of their not-relationship. “You know what I mean. Was that guilt and spite?”

Alex closed his eyes for a second, then shook his head just the slightest amount. “I don’t wanna do this,” he said very quietly. “I don’t…know if I can move on, but.” He licked his lips. “I wanna try.” He looked at her, up through his lashes again. “If you do.”

She nodded, and reached out to take both his hands. His fingertips were cold and wet from where they’d been pressed to the beer bottle, and she hoped her touch would warm them. “I want that.”

“Okay.” He took a deep breath, and gave her a small smile that was only a little bit fake. “You wanna set up a date for testing your psychic powers then?”

She smiled properly and squeezed his hands. “Yeah. It’s your calendar we have to work around, you know that – let me know when you’re free.”

“I will.”

They used Maria’s house on a Sunday afternoon, after she’d gone into the Pony to do the usual maintenance stuff she needed to do on Sundays while the bar was closed. Liz came too, unable to resist the siren call of experimentation. It was awkward at first, a little stilted, but it got easier. 

Maria had warned them that her abilities worked best on people she knew, and she couldn’t read minds like Isobel could, and she was used to keeping herself on a pretty tight leash. Liz and Alex remembered that, from when they’d been kids. Maria had always been so easily affected by the emotions of the people around her, and her own levels of empathy and sympathy were too high for her to function some days.

“Remember the time we watched that nature documentary in fifth grade Bio?” Liz said. “And there was a bit about the –”

“The gorillas,” Maria said, sighing. “Yeah.”

“She cried so hard she had to go home,” Alex told Michael, whose eyebrows were up by his hairline. “We weren’t really that close then, but I remember that.”

“Wait, I thought you’d been friends your whole lives.” Michael looked between them uncertainly, and back at Alex when he shook his head.

“I only joined the gang after Kyle ditched me in eighth grade. And yes.” Alex held up a hand and rolled his eyes. “I know you still think he’s a dick, you don’t need to say it.”

“I don’t know, I think it always bears saying,” Michael huffed, and Maria exchanged a grin with Liz, some part of her leaping with joy over the evidence that Alex and Michael had apparently been getting on well enough to have well-trodden arguments like this. 

They tested a few basics, tricks Maria already knew how to play. She could always pick the card they were thinking of, but she couldn’t ever tell them what it was. They could lay out a table of random objects and send her into another room, and she would be able to come back in and guess eight times out of ten which objects they’d held.

She sat with Liz, since they had the least baggage (romantically speaking anyway), and based on pre-decided memories Liz thought of, reported how they made Liz feel. They had to stop that one when Liz thought of the last time she and Max had slept together, just to fuck with them, and they all ended up either laughing or being too grossed out to continue. 

By the time they were done, Michael admitted that Maria definitely had psychic abilities, and got into a bickery argument with Liz over how doggedly focused she was in finding out all about their alien differences but was apparently unbothered by her best friend’s own freaky powers. It only ended when Liz threatened to hit him.

It was good. 

Five months into dating Michael Guerin, and they were having regular movie nights at either Maria’s or Max’s. Michael and Kyle’s living spaces were both too small, Alex’s was both too small and too far away, and while the apartment above the Crashdown did have a living room, none of them wanted to impose on Arturo. Isobel’s first act after moving into her new apartment was to organise her own housewarming party, and it was at that event that Maria discovered that Isobel Evans, one of Roswell High’s queen bees, shiny bitch extraordinaire, was secretly a rabid Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan.

“How come you never told me!” Maria practically shrieked at Michael. He picked up one of Isobel’s very nice new cushions and pretended to shield himself, laughing too hard to respond. “Oh my God, this changes everything.”

“You didn’t tell me you were watching Buffy!” Isobel actually did throw a cushion at Michael, who stopped it with his powers before it could hit him. Max leaned over and plucked it out of mid-air with a sigh, and Isobel threw a cushion at him too. “Where are you up to?”

“Somewhere in season four?” He looked at Maria for confirmation, and she nodded. 

“Last one we watched was Hush.”

“Oh I love that one.” Alex leaned over to grab a handful of popcorn. “Those monsters scared the hell out of me the first time I saw it.”

“You’ve watched it too?” Michael stopped laughing, looking at him, and Alex didn’t look back as he nodded.

“Can’t be friends with Maria without watching Buffy.”

“Even if you don’t like it,” Liz muttered, and smiled when Maria and Alex both booed her.

It wasn’t perfect, but for the first time Maria felt like it had the chance to become so. She thought about it long and hard, considering the issue from as many different angles as she could think of. She felt like she imagined Michael did with his spaceship pieces, turning them this way and that and trying to come up with new approaches to old problems.

But a couple of weeks later she lay in bed next to Michael, the two of them curled into each other in the dark, and she said, “I wanna ask you something, but I wanna make something clear first.”

She saw Michael raise his eyebrows, and saw the edge of his smile. “This doesn’t _sound_ sexy but I hope you can hear all the ways it could be.”

She snorted and pushed gently at his shoulder. “Shut up. It’s kind of serious, actually.”

“Okay.” He was wary now, and she rubbed the shoulder she’d kept her hand on, trying to soothe him. “Go on.”

“Okay.” She had to get this right, so she spoke slowly. “I want to talk about Alex, but I want you to know this isn’t me trying to break up with you in any way.”

Michael was tense under her hand, expression blank. “Okay.”

“Hey.” She squeezed his shoulder and slid one of her legs between his. “ _Not_ breaking up with you. I love you, that’s not what this is, and that’s why I wanted to say that first, because I knew that’s the first thing you’d think of.”

“How’d you figure that?” he asked in a low voice, not meeting her eyes.

“Because I know you, for starts.” She leaned forward and kissed the tip of his nose. “And it’s the first thing I’d think of too. Everyone knows that when one person in a couple says ‘we need to talk’ it’s about something bad.”

“Is this about something bad?” he asked.

“No,” she said firmly. “It’s an idea. And if you don’t like it, we can drop it, and I won’t bring it up again.”

A ghost of Michael’s smile came back. “Okay, again, you can see how this could sound sexy, right?”

“Shut _up!_ ” She laughed and slid closer to kiss him. Michael was still tense under her hands, but he relaxed a little when she kissed him, showing him that whatever she was about to ask, it wasn’t anything to do with her leaving him.

“Okay,” he murmured after a minute or so. “What about Alex?”

She settled back on her pillow so she could see his face, but kept herself wrapped around him as much as she could. “If I told you I wouldn’t mind if you two slept together…what would you think?”

Michael was very still, and his expression was unreadable. “Is this because he’s a guy?” he asked eventually. “And I’m –”

“No. Sorry –”

“Because I’m bisexual?”

He never just said bi. It was one of the more endearing habits Maria had learned he had. He liked the full word, and he liked saying it. “It’s not because you’re bisexual,” she said. “It’s because Alex is Alex, and you two…you still love each other.”

Maybe it had been too early to pull out the l-word. Michael tensed right back up again. “I’ve never – nothing’s happened, you said we could hang out, we haven’t done anything –”

“Hey, hey, I know.” She stroked her hands down his arm, his back, hooked her leg around the backs of his knees and pulled him in a little closer. “I know, okay? And I’ve never thought you have. I trust you, and I trust him. And I told you, this isn’t about me trying to break up with you, and it’s not about me trying to force you to choose, or anything like that.”

“It was never just sex.” Michael looked a little freaked out by his own words, but once he started, he couldn’t stop, and Maria knew it. “You know that, right? I love – loved him. I can’t, it’d never be just sex.”

“I should’ve phrased that better,” Maria allowed, annoyed at herself, and not buying Michael’s faltering use of the past tense for a second. “I didn’t mean that either. I meant more. Like, if I said I wouldn’t mind if you two were dating, what would you think?”

Michael frowned, not looking at her. “I don’t know. I guess…what do you get out of it? I don’t know why you’d even…”

“Because I love you, and I love seeing you happy.” She kissed him very softly. “And I love Alex too. And I’m not a possessive person. I think…like I said, it’s just an idea, but I think it could be good. Not all humans are monogamous, who says people on your planet are too?”

Michael smiled, the way he always did when she brought up their species difference. It faded back into uncertainty pretty quick though. “I still don’t get it,” he admitted. “Why you’d want this.”

“I told you – because I love you. And I’m not an idiot, I can see the way you two are around each other. Look,” she said, before he could freak out and start telling her how restrained he and Alex had been since he’d started dating her. “Have I ever gotten jealous when you and Liz get so caught up in whatever you guys are doing that you totally forget that time exists and Max or me has to go over and drag you outside to eat?”

“Not…that you’ve said?” Michael said, sounding like he was looking for a trap.

Maria sighed. “I like my people to be happy, Michael. Hanging out with Liz makes you happy. Hanging out with Isobel makes you happy. Hanging out with Max makes you happy at least fifty percent of the time these days. And being with Alex makes you happy too.”

“Big difference between hanging out with Liz and hanging out with Alex,” Michael said. “I don’t wanna jump Liz’s bones.” His eyes widened, but Maria just snorted.

“Babe, if you think I didn’t know that, you’re an idiot.”

It hadn’t been the right thing to say. Michael pulled away slightly, and Maria bit her lip and held still, letting him go. “How long’ve you known?”

“I’ve known bits and pieces,” she said slowly, not sure how much she should say. “A little bit from Alex, before we started dating. And after…I mean, it doesn’t take a genius or a psychic to see that whatever you two had, it ran deep. I’ve talked to Alex a couple of times over the last few months too.”

“I don’t want you to just pawn me off on him,” Michael said tightly. “If you’re tired of me –”

“Did I or did I not start this by saying how much I didn’t want to break up with you?” Maria fit her hand to the stubbled curve of his jaw and waited until he looked at her. “I do not want to break up with you,” she said clearly. “I get that it’s as hard for you to understand why I’m invested in your happiness as something separate to me as it is for me to understand why anyone would want to hang out with me if I’m not making them feel good in some way, but if I can come to terms with my issues, you can come to terms with yours.”

Michael stared at her. “Did you swallow a psychology textbook or something, what the hell was that?”

Maria tried and failed to hold back an ugly snort of laughter, but the sound of it set Michael off as well, so they lost at least a minute or two to just giggling like idiots.

“This is what I get for hanging out with Max one on one these days,” Maria laughed.

“You got that from Max? Oh God, please tell me you don’t talk to Max about me.”

Maria laughed harder. “Relax, cowboy, I’m not sitting down with your brother to hash out the intimate details of our relationship. I’m pretty sure he’d die on the spot if I tried.”

“You should try it,” Michael said, comically eager. “Not with anything real, just make him squirm.”

“You’re mean.”

“Only to Max, it doesn’t count.”

Maria shook her head and cupped his face again. “We’re getting way off topic here.”

“Yeah.” Michael’s tone said it hadn’t exactly been unintentional, but he was the one to shift closer to her this time, so she figured he wasn’t feeling as freaked out as before. “Have you talked to Alex about it?”

“Not yet.” She nudged her forehead against his. “You haven’t actually answered my question, y’know.”

“What?”

“If I said I wouldn’t mind you and Alex dating, what would you think?”

“I’d think you were crazy,” Michael said after a moment, but his voice was soft. “And I’m…yeah, I still don’t really understand it.”

“But you’re not saying no.”

“I’m not saying no,” Michael agreed. “I wanna hear what Alex thinks.”

“You want to be with me when I ask him?”

“When’re you planning on doing that?”

“Tomorrow, maybe. He’s usually at the bar on a Wednesday.”

Michael hesitated, then shook his head. “Is that okay?”

“It’s fine. I wasn’t planning on you being there anyway – it’s the middle of the week.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, Guerin.” She kissed his chin. “Like I said, it’s just an idea. No pressure.”

He made a noise that might have been uncertain, but didn’t say any more. Maria rolled over and cuddled back into his warmth, and he held her tight, his lips on the back of her neck. “Promise you’re not going anywhere?” he mumbled, just as she was falling asleep.

“Not unless you want me to,” she said, eyes already sticky. “Love you.”

“I love you too.”

So all in all, sounding the idea out with Michael hadn’t gone too badly. Maria had expected that though. Alex was the real concern.

He showed up at the Pony the next evening for his customary one beer, and this time she went over to him after Damian had served him and leaned forward across the bar. “I’m going on a break in half an hour and I wanted to ask you something. Can you stay?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Sure. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s nothing life-threatening.” She smiled, but he just gave her a cynical look.

“I hate that that doesn’t even reassure me the way it should.”

“Well you just sit here and try not to freak out, and I’m gonna go and pretend these people who’ve just come in aren’t tourists.” 

“Don’t be too mean to them,” Alex called as she moved away. She flipped him off and pasted on a wide smile for the group of six awkwardly approaching the bar. Three men, three women, the women all wearing alien antenna, one of the men wearing a t-shirt she recognised as coming from the UFO Museum’s gift shop.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, folks, but we’ve got a strict ban on alien gear in this bar.”

“Really?” The guy wearing the t-shirt looked down at his shirt, and one of the women shot to the top of Maria’s estimation by immediately removing her antenna headband and stuffing it in her handbag.

“Just zip your jacket up,” one of his friends told him, then looked at Maria. “Is that okay?”

“That’s fine.” She smiled, and kept smiling when the other two women removed their headbands too. “Thanks, we appreciate it. It’s nice to get a break from the gimmicks every now and then. What can I getcha?”

Someone – and Maria would kill them if she ever found out who – had apparently recommended the Wild Pony as the only decent local’s bar. Which was well-intentioned, but she really, really hated having to walk the narrow line between her irritation at tourists and taking their money for her constantly at-risk business. It always made her feel like a sort of fraud.

But these tourists were okay, and two of the women even bought palm readings, which was an extra forty dollars Maria wouldn’t sniff at. She almost forgot about her break until Damian tapped her shoulder and tipped his head in Alex’s direction, and Maria swore under her breath.

“Right, yep, thank you. I’ll be right back.”

She took Alex into the smaller of the storage rooms in the back of the bar, figuring they’d be less likely to be disturbed. “Okay,” he said, as soon as she closed the door behind them. “I know you said it wasn’t life-threatening, but this still feels really ominous.”

“You’re only saying that because you used to think this room was haunted,” she said dismissively, and he huffed.

“Only because Rosa told me those stories and I was dumb enough to believe her. Come on, what’s up?”

“Okay.” She was so much more nervous in front of Alex than Michael, and she wished she had a bar between them. “It’s about Michael. And me.”

Alex’s expression shuttered at once, a blank mask sliding into place with practiced ease. “Alright.”

She hated that face. She took a deep breath and pretended it didn’t hurt to see a soldier – an airman – standing in her friend’s shoes. “I’ve been thinking about you and Michael, and me and Michael, and I wondered how you would feel about the possibility of both of us dating him at the same time.” It came out way too formal, like some sort of stupid invitation, and Maria could feel the heat in her face and hoped it wasn’t visible in the poor lighting of the storage room.

Alex’s expression gave nothing away, of course. “You’re serious.”

Maria swallowed several sarcastic responses. “Yes.”

“Why?” The snap of his tone almost made her flinch.

“Because he loves you.” It was kind of shocking that those words made blink rapidly. “And you still love him.”

“And you don’t want him as much?” He covered his momentary break of composure with a cruel curl to his lips. “Is that it?”

Maria had had years of experience staying calm in the face of angry people. “If I didn’t love him, I’d break up with him. That’s not what this is.”

“No? So what the hell _do_ you think you’re doing, Maria?” Alex’s jaw was tight, his hands curled into fists at his sides. “You think we’re just – that Michael’s just a toy you can shuttle off on me when you get bored of him? Have you even asked him about this?”

“I have, actually.” She didn’t like her own satisfaction when Alex’s mouth snapped shut, and tried not to frown. “Last night. He didn’t want to take it any further till he knew what you thought. I know it’s not conventional,” she added quickly. “But I –”

“You think _that’s_ what I’m bothered by? The polyamory part?” Alex gave her an incredulous look that would have had her flushing if her cheeks hadn’t already been hot. “Not everything else?”

“It was just an idea,” she said quietly. “I didn’t want to make you mad. I just want us to be happy.”

“You think you’d be happy with this?” Alex took a step closer to her. “Have you even thought about it? Seriously? You’d be happy if Michael and I got back together, and he started spending time he could be spending with you, with me?”

“Yes.” At least she could reply honestly on that front, and she scowled up at him. “I’ve been thinking about this for weeks, Alex. I’m not just proposing this on the spot for fun.”

“Okay, fine.” He took a breath. “What if we do this, and then he leaves you? What if he picks me next time?”

“Then that’s how it is. I thought about that too, you know.” She tilted her chin. “It’s like you said: Michael’s his own man. If he decides he only wants to be with you, that’s his choice.”

“You’re forcing him to choose between us.”

“That’s exactly what I’m not doing!”

“He’ll see it that way!”

Maria bit her tongue to stop herself saying anything too sharp, and nodded. “He did, at first. But he knows me, and you know me – I don’t play games like that, you know I don’t. If I wanted Michael to make a choice between us, I’d tell him to do it. But I don’t want to lose him, and I’m not trying to push him away. I thought this might be something that could work for us. He deserves to be happy.”

Alex paused. Maria had him on that point, if nothing else.

“What did you even expect me to say?” he asked, quieter than before, if no less angry.

“Worst case scenario was you telling me I’m the worst person in the world and that you never want to be my friend again.” Maria couldn’t quite smile – it wasn’t a joke, after all. “Best case was a positive response. Realistic was something like this. I didn’t really think it out any further. No point in making plans for something you don’t know will happen.”

Alex nodded. He was silent for several long seconds, and Maria braced herself for whatever he was working himself up to say. She didn’t expect it to be, “What if he picks you?” asked so quietly it was almost a whisper.

She stared. “What?”

“What if.” He swallowed and visibly forced himself to meet her eyes. “We do this, and he picks you again? I can’t…I’m trying to move on, Maria, but if that happens, I don’t know if I’ll be able to take it. He’s the only person I’ve ever loved.”

She nodded slowly. “Well. I can honestly say I didn’t think about that, but only because the possibility never even occurred to me.” Alex’s disbelieving expression hurt her heart. “Seriously, Alex. He’s so in love with you.” The silence following that hurt as well. “You don’t have to make a decision on the spot. I know it’s kind of a huge thing to spring on you.”

“But.” Alex stopped, and Maria could almost feel him pulling the loose strands of his feelings back under his control, greying himself down. “Michael will freak out,” he said, carefully restrained again. “You said he was on board.” There was the barest shade of hurt in there, or maybe Maria was imagining it, or picking it up from him psychically.

Either way, she shook her head quickly. “He’s not on either side. And it’s not like he’s had much time to think about this either – I’ve had weeks, I’m not expecting either of you to make a snap decision.”

Alex frowned. He got two creases between his eyebrows exactly like Michael did, except one of his went along the line of the scar on his forehead, skewed at an angle while Michael’s were parallel to each other. “What _did_ he say?”

“Um.” Maria squinted, trying to remember his exact words. “He said he wasn’t saying no. That’s about as affirmative as he got. And he also didn’t understand why I’d even suggest it.” Which really said a lot about both him and Alex, that they’d both asked the same question and seemed to have the same inability to understand her answer. She tried not to take it personally that seeing them happy didn’t appear to be a good enough motive for her in their eyes. “Talk to him about it,” she suggested. “You can call me crazy together.”

Alex looked even blanker at the idea, which Maria interpreted as fear. “Do you have a deadline?”

“What? No!” She was kind of disturbed by that. “God, no. I know me saying this is like a living oxymoron or something, but seriously, no pressure.”

Alex snorted. “Right. Are we done?”

Embarrassed again, Maria nodded. She just hoped they hadn’t climbed their way up to a point of peace only for her to cut the rope on a stupid impulse.

She didn’t hear anything more about it from Alex for another two weeks. From Michael, the issue was raised only twice – over text to ask whether she’d asked Alex, and then a week or so later he confirmed with her that Alex had talked to him about it very, very briefly, before essentially fleeing for cover.

“He does that,” Michael muttered, head in her lap as they drew closer to the end of season four of Buffy. “Just drops off the face of the earth and says nothing about it till it’s on his terms.”

“Till he’s prepared,” Maria translated, and Michael huffed, not feeling as generous.

“Till he’s grown a pair.”

She tugged his hair gently. “Don’t be mean.” She half expected Michael to tell her how the delay was making him feel, but she wasn’t surprised when he lapsed into silence instead. It was all or nothing with him.

It was a Sunday when Alex came to them. She and Michael were at the Pony, Michael fiddling with the till to see if he could figure out why it kept sticking, Maria at the bar doing her Sunday stock check so she could decide whether she needed to put a new order in or not. She heard the door open and called out, “We’re closed!”

She knew it was Alex before she turned around just from the way Michael went still. Alex stepped into the bar slowly, unsmiling. Maria turned around properly on the barstool, abandoning her laptop and its spreadsheets to give Alex her full attention. Michael was silent behind the bar, ever-busy hands frozen mid-movement. 

Alex approached slowly, eyes flicking between them but settling more often on Michael. “Are you busy?”

Maria saw Michael shake his head, and she said, “No,” for both of them.

Alex stopped several feet from them. He looked good, leather jacket and dark jeans and slightly spiked hair. Maria thought suddenly of Rosa and Liz, and the colour red. Alex’s shirt was a deep burgundy, less flashy a shade than either Ortecho would have chosen, but armour nonetheless.

“How would it work?” he asked, tone flat and controlled, and Maria pressed down hard on the flutter of hope in her chest.

“Let’s sit,” she said, trying to sound as even as Alex, and breathed out when he nodded, glancing again at Michael. She got up and went to one of the little round tables rather than a booth. She wanted them all able to look each other easily in the face, none of them weighted two against one.

She and Alex sat, and Michael came out from behind the bar to follow them, wiping his hands on his jeans and spinning his chair round to sit on it backwards. Maria looked at the wooden bars in front of Michael’s chest and wondered what her own armour was.

“You thought about it then.” Michael said, looking at Alex, who seemed unable to hold his gaze for more than half a second at a time.

“I haven’t made any decisions,” Alex said, sharp enough that Maria saw Michael’s eyes narrow in response. 

“That’s okay,” she said quickly. “That’s fine.”

Alex frowned at her, then Michael, then back to her. “What would this be like, if we did it? How would it work?”

Maria looked between them quickly before saying, “Ground rules, I guess. We’d figure out dos and don’ts and…what we want, and what we don’t want out of this.”

“I can get us started on that,” Michael said, low and a little combative. He waited until they were both looking at him before continuing, looking down at the table. “No comparisons. No competition. I’m not interested in being anyone’s toy in a tug of war.” He made a face. “Just saying that feels wrong.”

Maria pursed her lips to hold back a smile. “Noted.”

“I’m not interested in sex with anyone but Michael,” Alex said, a little pink coming out in his cheeks. 

Michael raised his eyebrows and looked at Maria. “Was that ever even an option?”

“No threesomes,” Maria agreed. “That was definitely not in my mind as being an option.”

“So it’s…this would be a V situation.” Alex looked between them and frowned when Michael leaned forward, tilting his head.

“You’ve been doing research.”

“Did you think I’d been sitting with my thumb up my ass for two weeks?” Alex snapped.

“I was kinda wondering,” Michael said, not giving an inch, and Maria tapped her knuckles on the table, slightly on edge.

“Guys? Maybe tone it down a bit? Relax?” She paused, then said, “Yeah, a V. But I…I don’t want this to turn into a weird timeshare situation where it’s you and me,” she looked at Alex, “sharing a boyfriend, when we’re friends too.”

“Not much interested in being passed around,” Michael muttered, and Alex’s frown deepened.

“I don’t want that either. I don’t know…I know what I want, but I don’t know how much I’d be allowed to want, in a situation like this.”

“Everything,” Maria said, surprised, and then looked at Michael for backup or reassurance or something. “Right? This wouldn’t be a primary-secondary sort of set up. We’d all be on an equal footing.”

Alex didn’t look even a little bit convinced, but Michael straightened. “Maybe we’re going too fast,” he said, eyes on Alex. “No one’s decided anything yet, right? Why don’t we just hang out first?”

Maria looked at him, surprise mingling with appreciation. “You mean dates?” Alex’s expression was blank again, his body so still that Maria’s good feelings vanished like smoke. “Is that a don’t?” she asked uncertainly.

“Maybe.” Alex didn’t look at either of them, looking somewhere between their shoulders instead. “It depends on the context.”

“We don’t really go out on many actual dates,” Maria said, feeling the edge of an idea of what was bothering Alex. “No nights out in Roswell – I’ve got a personal rule about that. This town’s way too small.” Alex swallowed and met her eyes, just for a second, but she nodded as if he’d agreed – and maybe he had. “Dates doesn’t have to mean going out to eat or whatever.”

“We were just gonna finish up here and go watch more Buffy,” Michael drawled, a study in pretended casualness. “But if you wanna be wined and dined, just say the word.” He faltered when Alex’s gaze snapped to him, and he leaned forward. “Seriously,” he added, no trace of mockery in his voice now. “Just say the word.”

Alex looked at him like he was searching for something, his lips parting as if he was going to speak. But then he glanced at Maria, sucked in a quick breath, and looked down again. “Which episode are you on now?” he asked quietly, and Maria felt her own relief mirrored in the way Michael leaned heavier into his chair.

“Uh…I don’t know, where are we?” he looked at her, and she smiled.

“Primeval.”

Alex tilted his head, managing to convey a familiar mix of annoyance and fondness that just made her smile wider. “Helpful. We don’t all have your encyclopaedic slayer knowledge, you know.”

“Second to last episode of season four,” she said, and Alex perked up. 

“You gonna start season five?”

“Might do.” She grinned. “Interested?”

He hesitated. “Same rules as movie night?”

“Movie nights have rules?” Michael raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah, Guerin.” Alex leaned back in his chair. “Platonic only. For me and you anyway, but you guys are never particularly demonstrative on movie nights either.”

Maria had only sort of done that on purpose, not wanting rub anything in Alex’s face or be accidentally cruel, but it was still embarrassing to realise how transparent she’d been. “We’ll take it slow,” she said, trying to sound mature and sure of herself and not like she was scrambling in the dark. “Just friends, hanging out and watching some slayer action.”

“Just like old times.” Alex nodded. “Okay. You need any help around here first?”

Mercurial as ever, Maria’s brain instantly produced her with a long list of things Alex could help her with, her spreadsheets first and foremost. “Always. I thought Michael would be good with computers –”

“Hey!” he protested.

“– but I know you know how formulas work.” She stood up and smiled, eyes narrow. “You wanna come up to the bar, or shall I bring my laptop to you?”

Alex sighed. “Already, I’m regretting this. Bring it over.”

“I’ll get back to the till, I guess,” Michael said dryly. He got up too and kissed her cheek before going back over to the bar.

It was a little awkward having both of them there now they’d stated their intention to give this – what, relationship? – a sideways sort of attempt, but Maria’s optimism was already at work, giving her ideas of what this could be like in the future. Like she and Michael had settled into a comfortable relationship and routine, they could do that with Alex. Hanging out with both of them, being with Michael and knowing he’d been out with Alex the day before, or knowing he was going to him the day after.

Making plans together, maybe. Going out as a trio? Possibly. Just like Liz could engage Michael’s scientific interests, so Alex could engage parts of Michael Maria couldn’t. It could work. She didn’t entirely believe in speaking things into existence, but positive thinking never hurt.

She and Michael had driven over together, and Alex followed behind them as they drove back to her place and she started reheating some chilli while Michael set up the TV. He and Alex weren’t looking at each other, and Maria called Alex over to watch the chilli while she went to her bedroom to change into something slouchier than the skirt she had on.

It was okay. She sat at one end of the couch, Alex at the other, Michael in the middle. They ate their chilli while Buffy fought Adam on the TV and Michael lasted about ten minutes before starting in on his muttering about how Adam’s body was a physical impossibility.

The moment Alex leaned forward to shoot Maria an incredulous look that she returned with an eyeroll, she knew it would be fine. For today anyway. “Guerin,” Alex said slowly. “This is a TV show about a gateway to hell in California. And you’re hung up on _Adam?_ ”

“Okay, speaking of hung though,” Michael said, and Maria bit back a grin, realising that Michael had absolutely baited both of them. “Do you think they designed that aspect of him too? Like, they’ve made all sorts of changes to this dude’s body, how far do you think they went?”

They had to keep pausing to accommodate the increased amount of discussion and bickering, but it was great. It took them all afternoon just to finish the last two episodes of the season, and Maria wouldn’t have changed a minute. They’d all gotten closer on the couch too – she was curled against Michael’s side, and Alex wasn’t holding himself back so much, gesturing and meeting their eyes like it was easy.

They decided not to stop, because once Alex realised Michael had no idea who Dawn was, he insisted on staying for the reveal. Michael grumbled about them hiding spoilers from him, but his, “What the _fuck?_ ” when Buffy and Dawn both called Joyce their mother was worth everything. Maria and Alex both burst out laughing, and as Michael swivelled his head to stare at both of them, it turned into a ridiculous giggle fit for her.

She hadn’t heard Alex properly laugh for what felt like years. Michael started laughing too, unable to help himself, and it was pretty much perfect.

Michael was no less confused about the sudden appearance of a second Summers daughter by the end of the next episode, but as they all got up for Alex to leave, he and Alex both seemed to realise that the day had actually gone well.

“I feel like this was kinda my pick, or Michael’s,” Maria said, leaning against the wall. “How about two more where one of us picks something we do? Just hanging out, movie night rules.”

Michael looked at Alex, who nodded slowly. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”

Michael’s body seemed to lift, a smile creeping slowly onto his face. “Sounds good.”

Maria wasn’t sure, but she’d be willing to bet at least a few dollars that Alex was blushing. “Right. Well. Night, guys.” He ducked out quickly, and Maria grinned as Michael closed the door and looked at her.

“Am I imagining that that went okay?”

“If you are, it’s a shared hallucination.” She reached out and hooked two fingers through his belt loop to tug him close enough to kiss. “Okay?” she breathed against his lips.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Still, y’know, expecting it to blow up in our faces, but…maybe five percent less than before?”

“Just five percent?” she laughed. “We’ll have to work on that.”

Alex was the one who came in early on a Tuesday next week, just after she’d opened, and sat at the bar with a frown that said very clearly that he needed to talk, but he wished he didn’t have to.

“What’s up?” Maria asked, feeling infinitely more relaxed with the bar between them.

Alex, to his credit, got straight to the point. “I don’t know how to date.”

Maria blinked. “Okay. I mean, I’ve never dated more than one person at once either, but –”

“No, I’ve never dated _anyone_ before,” he said with an irritable edge, voice low even though they were the only ones in the bar so far

Well shit. He’d never been forthcoming about his romantic life, but Maria had just chalked it up to one of the things he didn’t want to talk about, like his combat experience and his family. “Not even after Don’t Ask got repealed?”

“I was kinda busy.” He drummed his knuckles on the bar, not looking at her. “I never wanted to complicate things.”

“You and Michael both then.” It wasn’t a secret, so she didn’t feel bad saying it. “Is that a problem?”

He glared at her. “You said I should pick something for us to do, all of us. And I don’t have any ideas.”

“What, any?” 

“None that’re any good.” He sighed. “Can I have a beer? I need a drink.”

“Oh yeah, sure.” She turned to get a bottle and popped it open under the counter, and after a moment’s consideration, turned and got a bottle of tequila down for herself, pouring a little into a cold glass and clinking it against Alex’s beer. “Salud.”

He snorted and took a drink. “I don’t know what he likes,” he said quietly after they’d both swallowed. “I know you. I don’t…I know him, but I don’t know what he likes.”

There was something unbearably sad about that, but Maria just nodded, thinking practically. “Well, he likes to fix things?”

“Okay, but I’m not gonna put him to work on a date.”

“Mm. But I mean, he likes to _do_ things? He’s a pretty fidgety guy; he doesn’t even really sit still when we watch TV.”

“I noticed that.” Alex frowned. “But I don’t…if it was just you, it’d be easy.”

Maria smiled, tickled. “Where would you take me on a date?”

“Out of Roswell, for a start.” Alex leaned his chin in his hand, elbow on the bar. “I’d check out what the towns around here are doing, see if there were any events going on. I know you love a craft fair.”

“I do love a craft fair,” she agreed, warmed through. “And a flea market.”

“Yeah, window shopping for useless junk would be perfect for you. Or maybe something musical, a bunch of live bands or a dance or something. Or a food event, or a beer festival or something. Would a distillery tour be too close to work for you?” he asked, seeming genuinely curious.

“Depends,” she said, unable to repress her smile at all now. “If it was something interesting, I’d definitely be up for that. God, you’d be great at dating me.”

“Thanks.” He looked a little less pissed off at himself, but he still wasn’t smiling. “It’s Michael I need the help with though. And I don’t want to…I just want something low stakes. Nothing public yet.”

She nodded slowly. “This might be a dumb question, but why don’t you just ask Michael?”

He scowled at her. “You don’t think that’ll come across pretty tragic? I’ve been in love with you since we were teenagers, but I can’t think of a single decent idea for a date? God, I can’t believe this.” He dropped his head, the hand on his chin sliding up to cover his face. “I can’t believe I’m asking for advice on how to date Michael from his _girlfriend_. What the hell is my life.”

“An edgy rom-com?” Maria suggested, and smiled when he lifted his head to glare at her again. “Okay, different angle – what would be _your_ ideal date?”

Alex’s sour expression smoothed out to blankness. Maria waited, sipping her tequila while he thought. “Something small,” he said finally. “Either something out of town, or something out of the way.”

“No romantic restaurant dinners?”

“Not in Roswell.” He took a drink, not looking at her. “I’d like…something outdoors, maybe. But I’m limited with that, these days.” He gave her a humourless smile, kicking the bar with one of his feet.

“How limited?” she asked. “There’s plenty of easy hiking around here. You don’t have to jump straight to winter sports or whatever.”

“I’ve never hiked on this leg.” Alex took another gulp of his beer. “Uneven ground isn’t my friend these days.”

“Could you though? People run marathons with prosthetic legs, right?”

“That’s different. And they’re using blades, usually. I don’t have one of those.”

“Do you have more than one?” Maria asked, the possibility only just occurring to her. Alex’s lips twitched at whatever her face was doing.

“Yeah, I’ve got a spare.”

“Are they different?”

“One’s older. This one fits better. I’d wanna try it on my own first,” he said. “Just to see how I handled it.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You mean hiking?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that dangerous? What if something happens? And before you say anything,” she added sharply, seeing the flash of irritation in his eyes, “I’d say that to anyone, amputee or not. Solo hiking can be dangerous. What would my mom say if she heard you were planning to go out on your own?”

Alex’s expression softened. Mimi had liked taking Maria out on day trips to national parks or hiking trails, both of them immersing themselves in nature. Maria hadn’t been on any sort of trip like that for years, not since her mom had started needing all her attention, and she saw her sorrow mirrored in Alex.

“Point,” he conceded. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”

“And you could still talk to Michael,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be a surprise or anything.”

“Mm.” He didn’t seem convinced. “Did you guys decide whether yesterday counted as yours or Michael’s?”

“I say it should be his, since he’s the one who technically invited you,” she said. “But that’s just because I’ve got a good idea of my own.”

“Which is?”

“Cooking together.” She laughed at his wide eyes. “Nothing fancy, just cooking a meal. Michael’s not too bad in the kitchen, and I know you’re not terrible either.”

“I’m pretty bad.”

“At cooking,” she agreed. “Not desserts. I remember all your birthday cakes.”

“Can we call them _my_ birthday cakes if I was making them for other people?”

“Yeah, because you were the one making them.” In her kitchen or the Crashdown, with ingredients bought with his own money rather than taken from his house. “Hey, if Michael asks, am I allowed to tell him you’re thinking about outdoorsy stuff, or do you actually want to decide on something first?”

Alex hesitated for a painfully long time. “You can tell him,” he decided at last, and Maria pretended to wipe sweat off her forehead just to make him give her an annoyed look. “Shut up.”

“Hey, come here.” She grinned and leaned forward, beckoning him in. “Lemme tell you a secret.”

“If the words ‘live, love, laugh’ come out of your mouth, I won’t be held responsible for my actions,” Alex warned, but he leaned in anyway.

Maria took his chin gently between her thumb and the curl of her index finger. “The only bad date is one where you don’t like the person you’re with. It can be the shittiest date in the world where literally everything goes wrong, and it won’t matter if you like the other person.”

Alex smiled, a very small smile, but it still felt like a victory. He turned his head to break gently out of Maria’s grip, and she let him go. “That just shows your lack of imagination,” he said. “Worst-case scenario for a date – everyone dies.”

Maria burst out laughing and straightened up. “Wow, okay. Hey – what’s the best case scenario?”

“I’m not so good at picturing those. Try to hide your surprise,” he added sardonically. Maria snorted.

“I’ll try, but you know I’m a bad liar.”

They cooked together that Sunday. Fajitas with all the trimmings, everything homemade. “A fajita party,” Alex said when he arrived, giving her an amused look, and Maria shrugged unrepentantly. The two of them had made fajitas with Rosa and Liz a couple of times when they were kids, all of them working together and separately on different parts of the meal.

So: they all made tortillas, Michael cooked the meat, Maria made her mom’s special peach salsa, and Alex made the guacamole. Or that was the idea, anyway. In practice, as Maria had known would happen, they swapped roles and lent each other helping hands whenever needed. It was pretty much perfect.

The Sunday after that, Alex drove them out to Bottomless Lakes. “It’s got flat trails,” he said, like he was daring either of them to deride him for it.

“Sounds good. I haven’t walked anywhere for ages.” Maria’s boots felt stiff and heavy on her feet, and she kicked the back of Alex’s seat gently. “Last time I actually went hiking was before Mom got bad. At least five years ago.”

“And I’ve never been,” Michael said. He was sitting up front, next to Alex. “Like, hiking, or this place we’re going. Either of you been before?”

“I have, when I was a kid,” Maria said. “I don’t really remember much.”

“I didn’t even know you had hiking boots.” Michael gave her an amused look. “Specialist equipment. You got a pair of ski poles somewhere too?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you,” she grinned. “Alex, you got sunscreen on?”

“No?”

“You should.”

“I’m immune,” Michael told him smugly, and Alex looked at him, eyebrows raised.

“You’re _immune_ to sunburn?”

“Pretty sure. None of us have ever been sunburned in our lives. Just like we’ve never gotten sick. You should’ve seen Liz’s face when Max told her – she looked like she was gonna throw something.”

It set the tone for the day, oddly. They got to the park and started out, Maria setting the pace deliberately slow for all their sakes. They’d left early so they could walk while it was still relatively cool, and while they walked, they talked. More than they had on either previous occasion, and about much more personal things too.

Michael talked about being an alien, bringing up differences as he remembered them or they occurred to him. He’d given it a lot more thought than Max or Isobel had, over the years. Maria knew a lot of it, but she hadn’t known that Michael had experimented with consuming other weird substances, after discovering he could drink nail polish remover. She hadn’t known that he’d hitchhiked out to the Foster Ranch as a kid just to sit there and wait. She hadn’t known that Alex had found a piece of the console he was building in his cabin, and had given it to Michael not long after she’d started dating him.

Alex spoke too, though less than Michael did. Bits and pieces about some of the places he’d been while on leave, things he’d read in the Project Shepherd files, one brief mention about some sort of ‘survival training’ his dad had made him and his brothers do as kids. 

Some of what he said clearly wasn’t news to Michael, like some of what Michael said hadn’t been new for Maria. And when she spoke, she found herself mentioning things she knew one of them knew already. Like they were all trying to fill in the gaps between them in some way. 

Walking made it easier. Alex didn’t have to force himself to look at either of them, Michael wasn’t forcing himself to stay still, and Maria felt fantastic to be out in the open for the first time in forever. She was even starting to remember some of the wildflowers and trees her mom had always known on sight.

After coming out of the restroom block by one of the lakes, she saw Alex and Michael sitting opposite each other on a picnic bench, heads bent close. Alex noticed her first, falling silent, and Michael gave her a hopeful look as she came over. “I know it isn’t over yet, but tell Alex this has been good.”

“It’s great,” she said, beaming. “Top marks, best date yet.”

“I still maintain I should get another shot, since you guys actually had time to think of options,” Michael said. He looked at Alex, turning hesitant. “But it’s been good, right? It’s been okay?”

“Better than I thought,” Alex allowed, looking up at Maria with something like nervousness. 

“Quit pushing,” she told Michael, reaching out to shove his shoulder gently. “Come on, let’s go back and get lunch.”

“I wasn’t,” Michael said quickly, getting up when Alex did. “That’s not what I was doing.” He shot her a panicked look, but before she could say anything, Alex spoke.

“Relax, Guerin, I’m not a spooked deer. I’m not running anywhere.”

Michael eased immediately. “You wouldn’t be a deer anyway,” he said, picking up the water bottle Maria had forced him to bring, even though he still insisted he needed to drink less water than humans. “You’d be something like a wolf.”

Alex tilted his head. “I don’t know whether that’s supposed to be flattering or not.”

“Wolves are awesome,” Michael said, playing up his offence that Alex would think otherwise. “Come on.”

“I’m with Michael,” Maria nodded. “Wolves are cool.”

Alex’s smile felt like a reward. “Okay, I’ll take it.”

They went to the Crashdown for lunch when they got back to Roswell, at Alex’s suggestion. Maria guessed it was such a familiar place that it maybe didn’t count as fully public for him. And they’d all eaten there before anyway, so they weren’t breaking new ground.

Nothing was decided then, but Maria was sure the balance had tipped. Three good dates – a lucky number.

It felt lucky anyway, until her next visit to her mom. She went at least once a week, usually on Monday mornings before she opened the bar. She kept her guilt locked tightly down and pretended to everyone, Michael included, that she was fine. Everything was fine.

It was completely fine that her mom only recognised her one visit out of three now. It was fine that she still had no idea what was really wrong with her. It was fine that she had no idea whether the condition was genetic. It was fine that she had no other family left to ask. It was fine that she’d had to commit her own mother to the psych ward of an assisted living facility she had to force herself to visit.

She was a bad daughter. Her mother had given her everything, she had been Maria’s whole world, and Maria had paid her back by locking her away and only visiting out of a sense of duty.

It just seemed so pointless to visit when Mimi didn’t even know who she was most of the time. It wasn’t like she would know or care if Maria skipped a week, or mind that she only came once a week at all. She was comfortable, she was taken care of. She was as happy as it was possible for her to be now.

And every time Maria visited her, it got harder. It had been different when they’d at least been living together. It didn’t hit so hard when Mimi looked at her with blank eyes or tried to talk to her as though she was a customer at the Wild Pony. But now it was like a full body blow every time, and it hurt worse than anything Maria had ever felt.

But she was playing the part of a good daughter, so she was at Sunset Mesa on a Monday morning, resisting the urge to tell Mimi everything that was going on in her life right now because she’d learned from experience that it would just confuse her. Or worse, Mimi would treat her like a stranger, or make it clear that she wasn’t interested. That hurt most of all. 

Maria had read a fair amount of the support material out there for children of dementia sufferers and the like, and what she’d realised she was most afraid of was Mimi telling her, without recognising her, what she really thought of her daughter Maria. What if it wasn’t all good? What if her mom hadn’t really loved her as unconditionally as she’d always said she did? What if she’d secretly been disappointed in her all along?

Dwelling on it wouldn’t change anything, and it just made her cry if she did.

So: another Monday morning, another visit to Mimi. Another hour or so of sitting with her mother, who didn’t know who she was, and actually having a better time talking to Bernadette the receptionist on the way out. Her father had died the year before after a nine year descent into dementia, and she’d found Maria crying so hard she could hardly breathe after her first visit and been the exact mix of kind and sarcastic that Maria had needed.

“Same shit, different day,” Bernadette said when Maria asked her how she was doing. “I’m trying this new high-fibre diet. I don’t mind telling you, it’s playing merry hell with my insides.”

Maria snorted. “Backed up or gushing pipes?”

“Backed up, mainly. But when it explodes, it _explodes._ ” Bernadette rolled her eyes. “Don’t know how much longer I can put up with it, I’ll tell you. What about you, honey? How you been?” Bernadette’s only outward similarity to Mimi was her age – she was a large white woman with wispy red hair and cat-eye glasses – but she filled a gap that was cracking wider open in Maria every day, brought into sharp, bleeding focus with every visit, and Maria had begun to look forward to seeing Bernadette more than her own mother. Another thing to feel guilty about.

“Nothing much. I’ve been hanging out with one of my best friends a lot more lately though, that’s been nice. I missed him a lot while he was gone.”

“He’s not gonna muscle out your boy, is he?” Bernadette asked, raising a pencilled eyebrow. Maria laughed and shook her head.

“I’m not his type.”

Bernadette gave her a look that said how unlikely she found that idea, and Maria laughed again. “Well, no offence to your boy, but I’d keep my guard up if I were you. You know what I think about men.”

“They’re all dirty cheats,” Maria nodded, smiling, and Bernadette shook a finger at her.

“Smile away, honey, but I’m telling you, they’re all dogs.”

Maria leaned against the desk and hummed thoughtfully. “People can love more than one person though. Not – I told you!” she laughed again at Bernadette’s exaggerated shock. “I’m not interested in my friend like that, seriously. I love him just as much though – just in a different way. Like I love my mom in a different way. It’s all love.”

“Getting a little spiritual for me there,” Bernadette said dryly. “I leave that sorta talk for Sundays. I do take your point though, honey. Sure you’re not making yourself another riverbed?”

Maria gave her a quizzical look. “Another riverbed?”

“For your love.” Bernadette shrugged. “When me and my man got divorced, I needed somewhere else to put all I’d been giving him. Ungrateful sonuvabitch,” she added darkly, the way she usually did when she mentioned her ex-husband. “Still. Never would’ve been able to get my Dolly before him, and I didn’t have time for my book club neither.” She gave a fond look to the photograph of her dog Maria knew she kept behind her desk. “You end up replacing one sorta love with another sometimes, I think. A new riverbed, that’s how my sister says it.”

Maria nodded. “I get that. Pretty sure I’m just reconnecting with an old friend though,” she added, smiling.

They chatted for a while longer before Maria headed off to open the bar, her head spinning a little bit.

A new riverbed. That was exactly what she was doing. Her worst-case scenario wasn’t as drastic as Alex’s – it was smaller and sadder. In her worst-case scenario, Michael left her for Alex. She’d seen the way they were around each other, she’d seen the sparks fly in multiple senses. They loved each other in a soul-deep sort of way, so much it was painful for both of them. But if they could figure out how to make it work between them, what would they need her for?

And Maria could handle that now, now that she and Alex were friends again. She’d thrown their friendship off a cliff when she’d gotten with Michael, but she’d clawed it back, and if Michael picked Alex over her, Alex’s guilt would mean he would stay friends with her through it all, and through everything after too. 

She texted Alex as soon as she got to the bar, asking him to come in when he was free. He messaged her a few hours later to let her know he was on his way from work, and arrived around eight. Maria left Luce in charge of the bar and dragged Alex into the back immediately, all of her panic rising up like a flood.

“What’s wrong?” Alex asked, hands on her upper arms and eyes wide. “Are you okay?”

“I’m a horrible, manipulative bitch,” Maria blurted out. “And the worst part is that I didn’t even realise what I was doing until Bernadette at Sunset Mesa accidentally called me out on it.”

“Okay, slow down.” Alex frowned, straightening up a little but not letting go of her. She felt his thumbs rub against her arms and had to hide her face in her hands for a second, so angry with herself she couldn’t even look at him. “How are you manipulative?”

“I’ve been pushing you into being my friend again so if Michael picks you over me, I won’t lose both of you like I would’ve done a few months ago.” Maria dropped her hands and looked up at him, guilt twisting her insides up like snakes.

Alex kept frowning at her, and tilted his head to the side. “I…thought you were doing that on purpose.”

“What?” Maria gaped at him. “You _knew?_ ”

Alex shifted uncomfortably, letting go of her arms and standing back a little. “Yeah, well. I consider all scenarios, not just the best and worst.”

“Let me amend that.” Maria narrowed her eyes. “You knew and didn’t _care?_ ” When Alex just shrugged, looking very much like he regretted coming into a small room with her, Maria glared at him. “No, explain. You thought I was purposefully manipulating you back into a friendship you’d very understandably pulled away from in case I had to guilt you into staying my friend later?”

“It was a good idea,” Alex said defensively. “I didn’t realise you weren’t doing it intentionally. I didn’t mind, why does it matter?”

“Because you matter!” If they’d still been teenagers, Maria would have shoved him. The main reason she didn’t was because he was standing in front of a set of shelves stacked with boxes that contained a lot of alcohol, and if that came down it would a) seriously injure Alex and b) cost her a lot of money. “Why aren’t you mad at me?”

Alex crossed his arms, scowling. “I figured your intentions were good. And it was kind of flattering, and it wasn’t like I thought it would ever be a scenario that would actually play out. There’s no way Michael would pick me over you, so where’s the harm?”

“Why would you think that?” Maria shook her head. “Seriously, I don’t know the whole story between you two, but I can tell true love when I see it.”

“Don’t.” Alex was still, clenching his jaw before forcing a shade of that blankness over his face. “Don’t,” he said again, quieter. “I don’t wanna hash out the pros and cons of Michael being with either of us. No competitions, remember?”

Maria deflated. “Right, yeah. Okay, but I still don’t get why you’re not mad. I’d want to kill me.”

Alex’s lips twitched, and he shrugged. “I’m kinda used to being manipulated, or having people try to manipulate me, anyway. I thought it was sweet.”

Criminal mastermind, she apparently wasn’t. “Is it kind of weird that you think me trying to manipulate you is sweet?”

Alex shrugged again. “You said we all had issues. Michael’s got a fear of abandonment, you refuse to appear vulnerable. I overthink everything and look for ulterior motives from everyone in my life, including the people I love.” He swallowed and gave her a small smile. “It’s kind of funny you didn’t know, when you think about it.”

“Hilarious,” she muttered. “I’ve only been torturing myself about it all day. Friends aren’t supposed to manipulate each other, Alex!”

“Bullshit. Friends do that all the time.” He shifted his weight a little. “Manipulation doesn’t necessarily have to be bad. It’s just trickery, at the end of the day, and we trick ourselves and each other constantly. It’s just the human condition.”

“That’s really bleak.”

“Is it bleak when we trick Liz into leaving the lab for her own good?” Alex asked pointedly. “Or when Isobel tells us she just coincidentally bought all this extra food, so we might as well go round to hers and eat it?”

“She said the grocery store messed up her delivery,” Maria said.

“She lied,” Alex said, with a definite air of patience that made Maria glare at him.

“Quit patronising me.”

“Then quit being so naïve.” He sighed. “Look, it’s fine. If you feel that bad about it, give me a free tab for tonight or something.”

“You drove here,” she argued. “You’re only going to have one beer, what’s the point? Besides, I don’t make amends like that.” One of the first rules she’d enforced when she’d started dating Michael was that he no longer had a tab, and she only served him if Luce or Damian weren’t there.

“What do you want to do then?” He rolled his eyes. “Stop being friends with me to spite yourself? You ever considered I was happy you were so keen to be friends again?”

“But not for the right reasons!”

“Your reasons being, you wanted to hang onto me in case Michael left you?” Alex gave her a disbelieving look. “How is that a bad reason?”

Maria could have throttled him. He had to be deliberately misunderstanding her, there was no other explanation. “Because it’s selfish! It’s all about me and what I want.”

“But I would’ve gotten something out of it too,” Alex sighed. “It’s a win-win, Maria. It’s not like I’ve been telling you to back off, is it?” When Maria hesitated, Alex snorted and stepped forward to hug her. It took a second, but she buried her face in his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his middle in return.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, and swore she could feel him rolling his eyes.

“For wanting me around? You’ll make me feel bad, talking like that.”

“Hey!”

“Oh, look at that,” he said sarcastically. “Did I just say something deliberately tailored to make you stop acting like an idiot? Guess I must be manipulating you, wow, I’m such a bad friend.”

“Oh my God, shut up.” She smacked his back lightly, and he squeezed her a little tighter.

“That’s the spirit.”

She told Michael about it over the phone that evening and he seemed as baffled as Alex had been, which was so frustrating that she almost went to Liz about it. But they’d made a semi-unspoken agreement between the three of them not to talk about what they were doing until they were sure they were actually doing _something._ And that hadn’t been a problem at the time, but Maria wished now she had someone to turn to for an outside perspective.

Michael came into the bar on Friday night after a long week and drank whisky, not beer, but in a slower way than he would than if he’d wanted to get hammered. He played pool and lost, which was how Maria knew he wasn’t cheating (the second she’d found out about his powers, she’d seen his pool hustling in a whole new light). He hung around until closing, and after Damien and Luce had left, he hugged Maria tightly.

“You sure you’re okay?” She ran her hands from his shoulders to the small of his back, frowning. She’d asked him half a dozen times already that night, but he’d nodded every time.

“Yeah.” He turned his nose into her neck and sighed. “Alex came round today. It wasn’t bad or anything,” he hastened to add, probably feeling the way Maria had gone tense. “It was just kind of a lot. We talked about some stuff we probably should’ve talked about a long time ago.”

“Like what?” Maria asked cautiously.

“Like…his dad, and my hand. And him being away so long, and us both being assholes to each other whenever he was back. Project Shepherd.”

“I thought you talked about Project Shepherd all the time?”

“Not about his family though, and them starting it.” Michael squeezed her tighter. “We shouted at each other a bit. But he didn’t leave.”

Maria thought she understood. “He would have before?”

“Always did. It’s his MO – we fuck, we fight, I say shit he’s not ready to hear, he runs.”

“But this time was okay?”

“I think so?” Michael groaned into her neck. “I don’t know. Take me home, DeLuca, I’m fucking tired.”

She smiled and scratched his scalp gently. “I can do that.”

Michael clung to her like a limpet all night and showered with her in the morning, seemingly unwilling to be apart from her for longer than a couple of minutes at a time. It would have gotten annoying if she hadn’t had to leave for work, and if he hadn’t needed to go and open the junkyard. She knew Michael didn’t mean to crowd her, but there was only so long she could handle a much bigger person putting himself in her space like that.

He helped her close again on Saturday night, and on Sunday morning they went back to the bar so Maria could run through her Sunday maintenance checklist. She’d never been with a guy who was so relaxed about her life revolving around the Wild Pony, but she supposed she’d never been with anyone who’d only really seen her _at_ work for years before they’d fallen for each other. Michael knew she practically lived at the Pony, because from time to time, so had he.

She didn’t call, “We’re closed,” when she heard the door open from where she was in the storeroom, counting crates of beer. She expected to hear Michael say it for her, and when he didn’t she finished up counting as quickly as she could. There was only one person Michael wouldn’t say that to, even in jest.

Alex was standing near Michael when she came out, the two of them not saying anything. “Hey.” She put her clipboard down on the bar and had to make herself walk out from behind it. “Come to help with my spreadsheets again?”

Alex shook his head, glancing at Michael, who only had eyes for him. “I, uh. I want to try this. Us.”

Maria nodded, trying not to smile too much in case it scared him off. “So do I. Michael?”

“Yeah.” He swallowed. “Yeah, I wanna try this.”

“Okay.” Maria was not going to let them get off course. Not yet, anyway. “You wanna finish off our ground rules talk from before, or shall I keep doing my thing while you guys make out in a cathartic way for a while?” 

“Rules,” Alex said quickly. “Definitely rules.”

“Hurtful,” Michael said dryly, and before Alex could freak out, Maria snorted and stepped forward to bump Michael on her way to the round table they’d sat at before.

“You’re only saying that because you’ve been wanting that cathartic make out for months.”

They followed her to the table and sat around it just like before, Alex looking more hesitant than she could remember ever seeing him before. “No comparisons or competitions,” he said, “and no threesomes. That was all we figured out last time.”

“I like the dates though.” Michael was sat on his chair properly this time, not so guarded as before. “With all of us. I wanna keep doing that.”

Maria nodded, and smiled when Alex did too. “No passive-aggressive bullshit. If one of us feels jealous or left out or whatever, we don’t sit on it.”

“What’re we telling people?” Alex asked quietly. “What if they react badly?”

“I don’t think we have to worry about our friends.” Maria frowned and looked at Michael. “I’d be more worried about you two, on your own.”

“Like we haven’t copped some looks?” Michael said dryly, and Maria made a face. Not everyone was thrilled to see a black woman with a white man, that was true.

“And the three of us?” Alex asked. “If we all went out together somewhere and someone took offence at Michael being with both of us, what then?”

Maria shrugged. “Take it as it comes, same as when people get shitty about me and Michael on our own, or the way they’d get about you two both being men. We’ll be careful where we have to be. I’m not much for PDA anyway.”

“I am,” Michael said, giving Alex something like a smirk. “But I know when to tone it down. And if anyone really wants to start a fight, I’m always happy to oblige.”

Alex gave him an unimpressed look, and Maria kicked his good leg gently under the table. “Your face’ll stick like that if you’re not careful. Look, if you want any rules about it, say so now.”

“Or forever hold my peace?” Alex raised an eyebrow, and Michael abruptly shook his head.

“That should be a rule – we can change things if we want. Whatever we decide now, we don’t have to stick to it like it’s a law.”

“I like that,” Maria nodded, and after a second, so did Alex.

“Okay, yeah. So anything we decide now, we can revisit it if things change in the future?”

Michael smiled, crooked and pleased. “Exactly.”

They talked for so long, Maria went and got them water. She’d never been in a relationship where she’d needed to consider so many different things and establish so many lines that couldn’t be crossed, at least for now.

They were all sold on the idea of dates as a trio, and good on dates as couples as well. They agreed not to set up a calendar to coordinate things in case they started treating it like a timeshare, but they also agreed that could change if figuring out who was doing what and when got too complicated. Michael stated repeatedly, awkward at first, then firmer, that he didn’t want to be the deciding factor in anything – they were doing this on equal standing or not at all.

Alex looked like he wanted to die when Maria brought up what they’d call each other. She was Michael’s girlfriend, so it made sense that Alex was his boyfriend. She’d never seen Alex go so pink, or Michael smile in that exact way before, like he was torn between so many different emotions he didn’t know what to do with himself.

They agreed not to describe what they were doing as ‘sharing’ Michael. They agreed to avoid crude terms, like Maria being too much woman for just one man, or Michael being greedy, and agreed to shut down anyone who even hinted at the suggestion that Alex wasn’t gay anymore. They set up a group chat. They tabled a few things for later, like the possibility of all of them sleeping in the same bed. They agreed to put off telling people for at least a week, just so they felt a bit more settled when they did.

Maria finally nudged Alex with her foot again, once she judged they’d come to the end of what she was already thinking of as their first negotiation session. “Hey.”

“Mm?” Alex was looking much more relaxed now, which meant Michael was at ease too.

“What do you wanna do now?” she asked them both. “I’ve gotta finish up here, but you two don’t have to stay.”

“Trying to kick us out, DeLuca?” Michael grinned.

A joke about their unresolved sexual tension steaming up her bar was on the tip of her tongue, but Maria held it back and shook her head. They were still new at this, after all. There would (hopefully) be time for jokes later. “Just saying, I don’t mind if you head off.”

Alex gave Michael a hesitant look. “Would that be okay?”

Michael’s bravado softened at once, pleased surprise creeping across his face. “Yeah. That’d be good.”

“So in the interest of clarity and the even footing,” Maria said, not wanting any of them to have a shred of doubt. “You guys are off to have your first date, and I won’t expect to see Michael for a few days?”

“Yes,” Alex said firmly, and Michael blinked and started to grin when Alex looked at him. “If that’s –”

“Yes,” Michael cut him off, getting to his feet. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

“Okay.” Alex blinked up at him and stood up as well, and Maria wanted to laugh just because she was happy. She got up and kissed Michael instead when he leaned down to her, and then pulled both him and Alex into a hug.

“This is easier than I thought,” Michael muttered against her hairline. “The three-way hug, I mean.”

“Don’t jinx it.” Maria squeezed Alex with the arm she had wrapped around his waist. “Go on, get out. I need to finish up here.”

Alex kissed her cheek quickly before letting go of her, and she grinned as she watched them walk out together, Michael bumping Alex’s shoulder just before they turned the corner to leave.

Maria had been doing Sunday maintenance on her own for longer than she’d been doing it with Michael, and it was kind of nice to get back to that. She put her music on loud and sang along, and fell right back into her old routine. She went home and had a long bath, and called Liz to see if she wanted to come over and watch a movie. When Liz said she was busy, Maria hesitated and called Isobel, who also hesitated before agreeing.

They watched Legally Blonde, and Maria spread out in her bed on her own after Isobel had gone home and asked herself whether she was okay with knowing that Michael and Alex were probably having sex right then. She sat with the question for a long time, and even got up to pull a few tarot cards over it.

Her answer came back the same, no matter how many times she asked it: yes. 

It stayed the same when Alex messaged the next day to ask if she was free for breakfast on Tuesday, and when Michael messaged just to tell her he loved her. It stayed the same while she worked, and when she went to bed on Monday night on her own again. 

It solidified when she got to the Crashdown on Tuesday morning and saw Michael and Alex sitting in a booth side by side, welded together at the shoulders. She slid in opposite them and grinned. “You look happy.”

“Don’t be smug,” Alex warned, but he was smiling too. “Michael said you’d want the waffles, so we already ordered.”

“Michael’s right.” Maria smiled at him. “Seriously though, you’re happy?”

Michael snorted. “I’m still in shock, come back to that question in like, a month maybe.”

“Yes,” Alex translated, and seemed to be answering for himself as well.

They had breakfast. Maria and Michael went to work, Alex went to meet up with Kyle. They both came round on Thursday night to watch more Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Michael stayed with her all weekend, and Alex came over again on Sunday afternoon.

Maria called dibs on telling Liz. Alex got Kyle, Michael got his siblings.

“Both of you?” Liz raised her eyebrows when Maria told her. “And Michael? Wait, my dad said you guys have been at the Crashdown more lately, has this been going on a while?”

“Kinda,” Maria admitted, relieved that Liz seemed more aghast that Maria hadn’t told her than anything else. “We were just getting an idea of how it would actually work. We didn’t want to tell anyone till we knew for sure either way.”

“Wow.” Liz gave her an appraising look and smirked. “Very modern of you. Rosa would be so impressed.”

They both cracked up in giggles at the idea of Rosa’s reaction, and Maria hoped that everyone else was taking it in their stride as easily as Liz. She was most worried about Max and Isobel, but when she messaged Michael to ask how it had gone, he called and told her in a very bemused voice that they were both really happy for him.

“Isn’t that good?” she asked, laughing a little.

“Yeah, it’s great. I guess I was just expecting…I don’t know, I always expect them to be kind of disappointed.”

“Well I’m glad they think we’re both worthy of you,” Maria teased.

“That’s just it – I was figuring they’d think it’d be the other way round, y’know? I’m not worthy of you guys.”

Maria made an _ehhhh_ buzzer sound. “No trash talk in this house, Guerin, you know the rules.”

“I’m in my truck, not your house,” he protested.

“You know I meant the metaphorical house of _us_.”

“Yeah, I know.” He sounded like he was grinning, wide and easy. “Hey. I love you.”

“Sap. I love you too.”

Kyle, of course, gave her a congratulations hug the next time he saw her, which was at the Pony with Alex looking on with a mixture of embarrassment and badly-concealed pleasure.

At the next movie night at Max’s, Maria sat between Michael and Alex, Michael’s arm around her shoulder, her legs draped across Alex’s lap, and no one batted an eye. Afterwards, Michael mentioned in a roundabout way how far out Alex’s place was, and Maria rolled her eyes and told him bluntly that he was welcome to stay over.

Alex declined the first time, but not the second. And a couple of weekends after that, they all went to his place, which was the first time Maria had seen it at all. Michael was hell-bent on beating the cabin into a shape that was actually decent to live in, and kept talking about adding an extra room or at least clearing out the shed space and turning it into a good-sized bathroom.

“You could strip the porch and link them up, and you’ve got an instant extension right there,” he told Maria, his arm around her shoulders as he pointed out the lines of the potential space. “And you could use the creepy bunker space for storage, or I could figure out how to put some stairs in so it could be a decent basement. You could put the generator in there to keep it out of the way too.”

“Michael Guerin, home improvement guru,” Alex said, probably intending to be dry though it just came out fond, sitting in the porch chair and watching them. “Are you done pointing out all the flaws in my house yet?”

Michael let go of Maria and went over to put a hand on each arm of Alex’s chair, leaning down to kiss him. Maria leaned against the wall and watched, smiling. “There’re perks too,” Michael murmured as they parted.

“No risk of noise complaints,” Maria agreed. “No nosy neighbours, and beautiful views. I like it.”

“Maybe wait till you see why Michael keeps complaining about the bathroom first,” Alex advised after a second, looking slightly shifty.

The inside of the cabin was nice, if overcrowded. The kitchen was good – Maria was a big fan of an apron sink. But the bedroom was tiny, the double bed barely fitting into it, and the bathroom was a closet. It had no shower, and only a half-size tub that she stared at in shock.

“You’ve got to remember,” Alex said from behind her, “this was a hunting cabin built in the fifties.”

“I’m with Michael on this,” she said, finding her voice. “Alex! How come Michael’s allowed to put grab-bars in my bathroom but not yours?”

“He says there’s no point if I’m gonna rip the whole thing out anyway,” Michael muttered. “Which I get, but ha – see? Maria’s on my side.”

“Oh, big surprise.” Maria turned around to see Alex rolling his eyes and trying not to smile at how Michael was sliding an arm around his waist and leaning in to kiss his cheek. “Shut up, I manage fine.”

Maria huffed and went up on tiptoes to kiss his other cheek, making him laugh. “Just let Michael do what he wants, it’s easier. And then you won’t have to deal with two sets of puppy-dog eyes. Oh!” She leaned back, grinning. “That’s another thing – this place would be great for a dog.”

“Don’t give me ideas,” Alex snorted, but he was grinning. “Come on, did you want to go for a walk or not?”

“Didn’t wear these for style.” Maria stamped one booted foot on the floor. “Let’s go, boys.”

She leaned into Michael’s side as they left, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder, holding Alex’s hand on his other side. It was pretty much perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> Maria charges tourists an extra $5 at least for her palm readings, more if they're annoying her.
> 
> Shoutout to [couldaughter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldaughter) for being there on twitter ([@dotsayers](https://twitter.com/dotsayers)) for me to ramble to about my ideas for how a malexa relationship could possibly work.
> 
> [Find me on tumblr!](http://myrmidryad.tumblr.com/)


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